Did Google Sabotage Firefox? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871246510264320 <comment><USER2> I always find it curious in the Chrome vs. Firefox discussion, that while people bash chrome and think of Firefox as the truly free alternative, in the end, even in this very technical community here, many people still choose Chrome. Now, I got the theory that this has to do with many techies here being US based, there are probably lots of you using Macs and from what I understand, Firefox on Mac is even worse than Chrome on Mac? But really, I never understood it at all, because I never experienced Firefox as "unusable slow" as I hear people often complain about and thus I never switched to Chrome, because I felt it offered far more annoyances than the slightly lower speed of Firefox in comparison.

But what I am getting at, even now, that many people are starting to get really critical about Chrome and when Firefox seems to have redeemed itself regarding speed, many here still seem to think, Chrome is the end-all-be-all. And with that attitude, you have to wonder, is it really google holding Firefox back or is it us, the experts, who in large parts seem not to use it, while still preaching how bad chrome/google is becoming. If there is no easily pointed to technical superiority to Chrome, why are we not all using Firefox and installing it on our families and friends computers?

And a bit unrelated: Reading this rant on twitter is just ridiculous. Get a blog, dude!

<comment><USER3> > there are probably lots of you using Macs and from what I understand, > Firefox on Mac is even worse than Chrome on Mac?

From what I've read (I use Firefox on Ubuntu), there's a longstanding bug with Firefox on Macs using a scaled resolution that causes it to become unusably slow.

<comment><USER4> Is _that_ what it is? I can testify that, under equal load (hundreds/thousands of open tabs), Firefox on Mac is indeed unbearably slow at everything in a way that Chrome isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You have to be crazy to think that Google has nothing to do with the degraded experience of their services using the Firefox browser.

One example is Recaptcha, if you use Firefox, you will be asked to confirm the Recaptcha almost all the time. Switch to Chrome and your problems disappear.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/questions/1238593](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1238593)

It is only one of the several different things they did against Firefox. YouTube would be another one.

The reality is that Google created those problems for Firefox to brag about how Chrome was such a better browser etc ..

I wish Chrome had won the browser battle based on merit and innovation and not shaddy tactics and shenanigans.

<comment><USER6> I think ReCaptcha uses browser thumbprinting for remembering you are not a robot. I will sometimes use incognito mode to browse websites as a non user, and the ReCaptchas always make me find the chimneys or the stop signs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For me Firefox wins hands down because of containers.

I have a very old gmail account that my book, music/YouTube Red, and movie purchases are on. Otherwise I use my G Suite account. Firefox makes it possible to live with this inconvenience. If Firefox went away then I would cancel G Suite.

Firefox containers make web browsing tidy and somewhat private.

I believe that Google tries to hinder Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER8> No, Mozilla sabotaged Firefox.

<comment><USER9> ^ This. Mediocre performance. Slow startup. Poor UI. Crap like Pocket.

I'd be more inclined to use Firefox if it didn't feel so clunky, didn't keep trying to push Pocket on me, and took a more aggressive stance fighting against web annoyances and adtech.

Heck I might consider switching to Firefox if it could actually, reliably block autoplaying video - something that Safari and Chrome seem incapable of doing.

<comment><USER10> Pocket is a deal, search providers are a deal. All to put some money in Mozillas pocket to allow continued development of Firefox. They can't rely on donations and Google funding alone.

<comment><USER8> Whatever happened to being community-based and developers working on it because they wanted to help build a great application? Why do they even need a corporation giving them money to implement tracking and other features to compromise user privacy and security?

<comment><USER11> > Whatever happened to being community-based and developers working on it > because they wanted to help build a great application? Why do they even need > a corporation giving them money to implement tracking and other features to > compromise user privacy and security?

Browsers being:

1\. massively complicated,

2\. requiring massive feature support for compatibility with the ecosystem,

3\. the biggest attack surface on anyone's computer, and

4\. made by people doing huge amounts of work who want to eat.

I don't think we can have a secure, feature-complete, fully community- developed browser unless there's a massive refactor and simplification of HTML and related technologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And here does Mozilla what they can do best… blaming others for their own naivety – Have they really been thinking that Google is the friendly benefactor they acted towards Mozilla? And that removing features and choice and adopting stock features and stock design – as persuaded by Chrome engineers – would be a clever idea to mobilize the user-masses?

And now where this failed – oh.. it is Google's fault all along… because they have…. sabotaged Mozilla! The idea that Mozilla must blame itself for being naive… Impossible taught… never ever! It is always the other party which is to blame!

The glory days of past Mozilla are SO over sadly!

<comment><USER12> Don't get me wrong, Google tricked them. But if Mozilla would have been more intelligent... they never would have allowed a third-party having such a big impact on their own influences and decisions.

Mozilla had and still has the chance to break free from Google - break free from Google's mal-intentioned suggestions and helpful advice... and instead make freedom again with their original core user base... features/customization loving geeks and nerds...

But as long as Mozilla is so arrogant to not admit they have openly allowed all that to happen... as long as that, Mozilla does not have the right to picture itself as victim!

<comment><USER12> Also, still accepting Google money and surviving with it... I just can call this the most big hypocrisy possible!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19662852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19662852)

<comment><USER14> I posted my perspective/opinion as a former engineer on Inbox there anyone is interested in details on sausage making.</comment></comment>


New Safety Risks Under Scrutiny on Boeing's 737 Max - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/business/boeing-737-max.html <comment><USER2> Hmmph. Seems like they're starting to actually pay more attention, but I'm noticing a few patterns in the problems they're finding.

A) Overoptimism in terms of estimation of likelihood.

B) Lack of attention to 2nd order effects of modifications (grinding down a panel on the engine compromising a lightning protection material)

C) Still not seeing the QC I'd expect If they are just now finding out about rotor weaknesses.

Also, as I recall, there was some concern over whether or not the nacelle would even contain a thrown blade a while ago. I don't remember hearing anything on a resolution to that, or am I misremembering?

<comment><USER3> The blade containment is part of the engine itself, which is made by CFM. CFM has had some issues with the generation before LEAP and blade failure, but the last I looked at the reports it appears the blades were contained on the accident flights, its just the cowling caused issues.

Example of one of the incidents: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380)

Boeing would be responsible for the cowling design, and has been directed to update the cowling design based on the new models created based on this incident. The failure is not really as much a failing on Boeing's part to design it correctly in the first place, but a lack of data indicating certain unforeseen blade trajectories are possible on failure. Now that these are a known thing, they will be incorporated in design updates throughout the industry.

Final report: [https://ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR1...](https://ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR1903.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds a bit like another attempt of Boeing to blame pilots (reacting not fast enough). Pilots cannot react correctly to a system they have no knowledge of. NYT could have done a better job in pointing out that the observed failure mode of MCAS did not look like a trim runaway and sent out other alerts caused by the defective angel of attack sensor (unreliable airspeed).

<comment><USER3> The discovery that there's a gulf between what the Boeing engineers (many of whom are pilots) and the FAA previously thought of as runaway trim, uncommanded trim movement, and what they now know about this behavior not being recognized, means that many systems risk factors will get reclassified and thusly will have to be redesigned to be more robust. In this case, one of the main modes for the electric trim running away has been shorts in that system's wiring harness, so it now has to be redesigned because Boeing can no longer rely on the pilots recognizing it.

I bet speed trim will get a revamp too.</comment></comment>


Show HN: my weekend project Html5Snippets.com - <AUTHOR>

A place to learn and share html5/css3/js snippets. Its on a alpha/mvp stage right now. Let me know what you think.<p>Http://html5snippets.com <comment><USER2> I think thumbnail images might improve the browsing experience, even if they're mildly antithetical to a site that highlights the power of html5/css3/js.

Anyway, very useful compilation and well done - definitely bookmarked!

<comment><USER3> Agreed, needs thumbnails. Really nice site otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I will keep that in mind

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://html5snippets.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> Much nicer and easier to use compared to other sites that do this. Bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER6> Love the UI - well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Nutmeg – Mini daily fantasy for the world cup - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone - my friends and I have been working on a mini 3-a-side fantasy draft game for the world up. You can find it here: https://nutmeg.app/
We've been working hard to get this out in time and really encourage feedback on how to make it better.
On our horizon is thinking through how to expand this for other competitions (e.g. Champions League) and perhaps a full season long game as well.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> looks great can't wait to try it tomorrow! I've been looking for a way to score free drinks from my mates</comment>


Why JavaScript Will Become the Dominant Programming Language of the Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/08/09/why-javascript-will-become-the-dominant-programming-language-of-the-enterprise?utm_content=awesm-sharebuttons&utm_source=t.co&awesm=readwr.it_phr&utm_medium=readwr.it-twitter&utm_campaign= <comment><USER2> >> Node.js has over 30,000 modules available

how many of these are over a year old? how well maintained are they? how battle proven? how well is v8 going to be maintained 10, 15 years from now? can we buy an extended support contract for v8 from Google?

these are also questions people in enterprise want to know. how well does it interact with our existing CLR/JVM stack that we've used for the last 10 years?

I have never been convinced by the "writing server side and client side code in the same language is good" argument, different jobs require different tools. Someone once said of this:

'you know how to use a knife, so you bring a knife to a modern war fought with guns, tanks, and missiles while shouting "at least I can use the same tools when I eat and when I fight! I save so much time!" before somehow managing to shoot yourself in the foot anyway.'

<comment><USER3> I like your metaphor up to the point where I manage to shoot myself in the foot with a knife.

<comment><USER4> haha. didn't catch that one. english idioms...

<comment><USER5> I thought it was a deliberate non sequitur.

It comes off as pretty funny that way, and helps make the point.

"He could shoot himself in the foot with a knife."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No dynamically typed language is going to be "The Dominant Language Of The Enterprise" anytime soon. When you have hundreds of mediocre developers in cubicles pounding away at a single, huge, codebase, you're going to want as much compile time checking as you can get. You're going to want the ability to refactor and immediately see everything that needs to change, etc.

For a new language to have a shot at it, it should be statically typed and probably run on the JVM or CLR.

<comment><USER7> If the enterprise wanted as much compile time checking as possible, why haven't they adopted something like Haskell years ago? The checks done by the type systems of the JVM and CLR are laughable in comparison. There must be some different reasons at play here, too.

<comment><USER8> They're getting there. The leading edge of enterprise is already using scala or F#, which have a lot of the power of Haskell (in fact I'd argue scala's is more powerful in some ways, e.g. typeclasses cease to be a special case).

In terms of using Haskell in the enterprise, it isn't standardized enough (most libraries rely on GHC extensions), the library ecosystem isn't mature enough, cabal is still a mess (it's too easy to get your dependency tree into a broken state), there's not enough commercial support, there's not enough deployment/monitoring infrastructure around. Fundamentally, it was produced by academics who didn't care about selling it to the enterprise, and the effort to address these concerns hasn't entirely happened yet. It's getting there, and I think we'll see more of it as time goes on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Simple learning curve? The thing is its really easy to write bad Javascript and a lot harder to write good Javascript. For that reason I think it has a much higher learning curve then most of the current languages used for web development.

<comment><USER10> Exactly, any language that lets you program at the same time in an imperative, functional and OO fashion is anything but easy to pick up, let alone master. Personally I still have to get around and learn it, it just seems an extremely daunting undertaking.

<comment><USER9> Check out Douglas Crockfords book "Javascript the Good Parts" and/or his talks at Yahoo [http://yuiblog.com/crockford/](http://yuiblog.com/crockford/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is content marketing for Appcelerator. It builds a straw man of enterprise development that is convenient for Appcelerator's business model (scaling JavaScript applications), neglecting to consider other concerns such as stability, maintainability and support.

</comment><comment><USER12> With large software projects you want a language that is relatively easy to read. This is the biggest problem with JS, it's pretty easy to write but can become unreadable pretty easily.

Even best practises as described by "the good parts" are full of nested parens and functions , .call()s and IIFEs

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's my list of why other frameworks have become the language of the enterprise: (you can draw your own conclusions as to why JS won't fit).

1) Large resource supply - .NET, Java, etc resources are cheap, quick to deploy and abundant.

2) Pay-for library support - I can pay Oracle and MS gobs of money to support me when things go wrong. (how quickly they fix things is another question for another discussion)

3) Supported engine - Enterprise customers pay IBM, HP, MS, etc for support of JVM's, etc in order for the code to run.

4) Scalability - There is a reason programs at scale are written in languages that are written for performance. "Enterprisey" languages are verbose and have to be compiled because they allow for better control of performance at scale (notice I didn't say they perform better, there is a big distinction)

Lastly, JS _is_ already an Enterprise language, but mainly for front-end only. So the argument is whether it becomes a back-end language.

</comment><comment><USER14> Try writing anything larger than 10.000 LoC and JavaScript becomes a pain in the ass. No matter how many frameworks will appear unless there are fundamental changes in the language I don't see it making it to the enterprise.

<comment><USER15> TypeScript really helps with this.

<comment><USER16> Enough with Typescript. using a transpiler doesnt make the language better.

<comment><USER17> Why is it worse than using, say Objective-C to improve C? Genuinely curious here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't help but attribute all the JS bashing to good old-fashioned tech nerd snobbery.

A scripting language IS a programming language.

Write code -> some method of compilation -> Computer executes == programming language.

</comment><comment><USER19> Saying that something will have the same language on client and server is misleading: javascript (and most other languages) have very simple syntax - it's more about the libraries involved. Node.js and the browser environment are totally different (and I doubt there are many packages written for both settings).

Even if everyone were working in JavaScript, seems unlikely that you'd be able to be both an awesome client-side and server-side developer.

<comment><USER20> I'm not a node guy, but I thought one of the big advantages was just that... that you could use a lot of the same code. ORM/object modelling should be fine on server or browser, also template rendering, data/form validation, etc.

One thing that is a pain in conventional web development is for a lot of these things having to implement them twice (or write clever automatic converters or whatever to generate the backbone.js (or whatever) boilerplate models from the original django/rails/whatever/schema.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If we are talking front-end, then Javascript is already the dominant language for EVERYONE (for the web anyways.)

> Big brand names like GM, Yahoo, Dow Jones, Walmart and Dell have all > deployed Node.js and are touting its merits.

It's as if the borg is chanting node while it slaves away on its corporate machine. I bet if I asked Michael Dell what he thinks about Node, he would probably tell me to F-off.

I googled LinkedIn and the first result talked about how they replaced their Rails app with a Node app. Right, when I see an article talking about how X huge corp replaced their Scala app with Node then I might be more convinced.

We don't need to be locked into any one tool though. As we learn how to build things better we find that we can route our pipes to different boxes which handed different things rather than having one huge box handling everything.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love every time an article like this appears. Everyone is immediately on the fence, bashing JavaScript furiously. Yet momentum doesn't appear to be declining?

I'm a JavaScript developer mainly, with a background as a front-end oriented developer (php), but I also dabble a bit with C/Objective-C - especially since JavaScript got me interested in application development in general. JavaScript does bring a lot of freedom, a freedom that can hold you back, if you're not careful (code bloat, callback hell etc). The thing is, JavaScript is just plain fun to write in, and the responsiveness and full-stack capabilities are amazing.

I think we just have to accept that JavaScript is here to stay. And should its popularity fade, I should be ok with that as well. But until then, I'll keep having fun at work.

<comment><USER22> There's a HUGE difference between "here to stay" and becoming the "dominant programming language of the enterprise"

<comment><USER17> I'm not saying the article is right either, since it is a rather bold claim. But it is just as one sided to write it off as stupidity, because JavaScript is dynamically typed - or whatever. I can't force anyone to like JavaScript, nor would I like to, but my personal experience does lend some credence to OP from where I'm sitting.

I think the biggest problem with OP's claim is the lack of true enterprise software written in JavaScript. I can't think of anyone, besides a few lightweight SaaS applications.

We're currently building a large-scale application for public schools here in Scandinavia, but it is augmented by a .NET service backend. I hope we'll get a swing at a full-stack solution soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anybody actually believe this?

</comment><comment><USER24> I like JavaScript and node.js but I simply can't wrap my head around callbacks. Some people simply love to nest callbacks... Anytime I see that it drives me crazy....

<comment><USER25> Callbacks are possibly not the best way to solve concurrency issues. Node.js does it that way, but there's no inherent reason JavaScript should only solve concurrency problems with callbacks. It would be possible to implement a wide variety of concurrency models in JavaScript, and I'm sure people have and will. Node.js happens to be the early winner in that space.

We are still pretty early in the JavaScript story on the server side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Steve Yegge has been saying this for the past five years.

</comment><comment><USER27> Worse is better.

</comment><comment><USER28> Will?

</comment><comment><USER29> Enterprise software is about long-term maintainability, compatibility, and comprehensive support for all included components. Pulling packages from npm and the like unfortunately will not satisfy those prerequisites.

<comment><USER30> A recent nodeup episode discussed how many enterprises aren't using npm packages unless they wrote them in house, because they don't want/trust any code they haven't written themselves.

<comment><USER31> I've also seen other companies who do use third party modules through npm make sure they have local copies documenting the version, source, source url, etc. Just in case a particular project disappears.

One thing I wonder about, so far it seems to be mostly doing ok, but will NodeJS suffer the library versioning problems that plagued Java when I last used it...frameworks importing 2-3 different versions of Apache Commons for instance.</comment></comment></comment>


K8s-usenet is a collection of Helm charts related to Usenet services - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aldoborrero/k8s-usenet <comment><USER2> Helm is horrible, it makes simple elegant yaml files complex and makes the changes you actually need harder. Kustomize is the correct way to do things.</comment>


Facebook privacy settings: Who cares? - <AUTHOR> http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3086/2589

<comment><USER2> I think it's true that privacy issues don't have the power in themselves to drive a Facebook exodus, but I believe that a strong competitor will be given an unexpected boost by this controversy. I think this report seems to indicate that possibility.

</comment><comment><USER3> If Facebook really have 500 million users and if the guy who scraped all the publicly searchable profiles (171m) really got them all then a staggering 329 million people care.

<comment><USER4> I believe that Facebook locks down under-18 profiles by default.</comment></comment>


How I Tricked Myself into Shipping Too Late - <AUTHOR> https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/ <comment><USER2> Author here. Happy to answer any questions about the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is the current disposition of Zestful, have you ultimately found any users?

What technique did you settle on for parsing ingredient lists?

Do you use Zestful yourself, did you retrofit it on to any of your prior project ideas?

Besides validating demand sooner what else would you do differently next time? What project are you doing next? (These are neat)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for reading!

>What is the current disposition of Zestful, have you ultimately found any users?

It's currently in maintenance mode. My only cost is a single Heroku instance, and I can actually downgrade to the free tier if I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of performance.

I haven't found users. A few clients said they have project plans that will include Zestful, but they don't sound very definite. I think it's possible that it will eventually get a bit of business if a new project searches for an ingredient parsing API and chooses mine among the options available.

>What technique did you settle on for parsing ingredient lists?

I used linear-chain conditional random fields. I based my design on similar work by the New York Times a few years ago:

[https://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/extracting- structu...](https://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/extracting-structured- data-from-recipes-using-conditional-random-fields/)

I have a blog series about how I cleaned up their code and used it as the foundation for Zestful:

[https://mtlynch.io/resurrecting-1/](https://mtlynch.io/resurrecting-1/)

>Do you use Zestful yourself, did you retrofit it on to any of your prior project ideas?

Yep, I use it on KetoHub, my keto recipe search engine:

[https://ketohub.io/](https://ketohub.io/)

>Besides validating demand sooner what else would you do differently next time?

Good question. I'm not sure. I might adjust the money I spent on contractors. For this project, I spent about $8k on a Python developer to assist me with development, but I know Python pretty well. The money might have been spent better hiring someone to make a basic website because I'm not good at web design and I'm not crazy about the page I created. At the same time, I do want to get better at web design and not be dependent on contractors for all my web stuff because that slows down the process. I might try hiring someone to create a boilerplate site/theme then work from there.

>What project are you doing next?

Someone has approached me about potentially building a product for curating cryptocurrency news. I'm interested because I like cryptocurrency and it feels like it plays to my strengths, but we're still early in the process.</comment></comment></comment>


The Measurement That Would Reveal The Universe As A Computer Simulation - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429561/the-measurement-that-would-reveal-the-universe-as/ <comment><USER2> While I wouldn't entirely discount the notion that we're living in a simulation, I suspect that this measurement is probably quite problematic, for various reasons other people have addressed. Nevertheless, this article got me thinking:

 _Really?_ Can we actually simulate _any_ part of the universe with 100% quantum accuracy? I hadn't heard about that, and it seems a bit implausible to me. But okay, fine, let's take it as a given that we can in fact simulate a volume a few femtometres in diameter, as the article says. Furthermore, let's say that our universe-simulating capability increases in line with Moore's Law, doubling every 18 months without regards for the limits of silicon or anything else.

The question is: how long would it take _us_ to become those universe- simulating gods?

This is not a serious question, just a fun little exercise. If all of the above are true, then what will we be able to simulate, and when?:

2019: The nucleus of a single gold atom (8.45 femtometres)

2077: An entire helium atom (62 picometres)

2090: A cesium atom (423 picometres)

2115: A ribosome (20 nanometres)

2152: A red blood cell (7 micrometres)

2192: The smallest vertibrate, Paedophryne amauensis (7.7 millimetres)

2217: A human brain (150 millimetres)

2245: A small apartment and its occupants (10 metres)

2274: A small town (1 kilometre)

2335: Planet Earth (12,742 kilometres)

2407: The earth-moon system (812,000 kilometres)

2454: The inner solar system, inclusive of the asteroid belt (6.6 AU)

2475: The entire solar system, to the extremities of the Kuiper built (200 AU)

2516: Sol's sphere of influence, to the edges of the Oort cloud (100,000 AU)

2589: The Milky Way galaxy (120,000 light years)

2617: The Local Group of galaxies (10,000,000 light years)

2670: The observable universe (29,400,000,000 light years)

...But seeing as none of the initial assumptions are likely to be true, alas for all that. Would be kind of cool, though! (also, a femtometre is _really_ bloody small)

[Edit: mixed up radius & diameter for the size of the observable universe. _Hate_ it when that happens!]

<comment><USER3> Its definitely not 100% accurate. We can calculate observables like mass from basic principles to +/- 2-3%. However, there are a few things they didn't mention.

First, these things are not simulated at anything approaching realtime. Things are simulated on timescales almost as vanishingly small as the space-scales, and even this takes hours on some of the largest research clusters.

Second, these aren't simulations in the sense that you're used to. They involve taking a volume in 4-space (3x space and 1x time) and using Monte Carlo techniques to approximate what happens in that space-time. It is non- trivial to pick up where (in time) one calculation left off and start a new one, and would introduce a lot of error.

Third, the calculation time doesn't scale with the volume (or even the 4-space volume). Naively, it scales with volume squared.* We actually do somewhat better than this right now, but again, approximations are required to get there.

*Its actually the number of points in the lattice squared, so increasing accuracy by decreasing the space between sites scales as you'd expect.

Source: I spent more time than I care to admit writing a very simple version of these simulators as an undergrad.

<comment><USER4> Why should we have to make it 100% accurate ?

I mean, just like with videogames emulators, it can be good to simplify some things. That's how most supernes emulators were made until very recently IIRC.

I'm not a physicist, but for exemple if the subatomic particles can't be accurately modeled, couldn't they just be replaced by atomic particles and special case handling?

<comment><USER2> (Standard disclaimer: IANAQP, but...)

I think you're on to something. Rather than model each quark and gluon explicitly, you could just model probabilistic interactions at much larger scales. Maybe put in some special case handling so that if an observer within our simulated universe were to go looking for quarks and gluons, they'd find them. If they looked hard enough, some gaps might show: since subatomic particles are not actually being simulated in a continuously deterministic fashion, it would never be possible to observe both position and velocity simultaneously. An observer looking at an electron shell in two discrete moments would not be able to track a continuous orbit between them, since they'd actually just be seeing two separate expansions of what is effectively a lossy compression algorithm.

Also, it ought to be possible to model only the macroscopic dimensions explicitly, replacing the other seven microscopically enfolded dimensions with a bunch of arbitrary constants that accomplish more or less the same thing. Might drive our observers a bit batty, because those constants would _appear_ to refer to a bunch of microscopic enfolded dimensions, which they'd never actually be able to detect.

Right, now I'm starting to freak myself out...

<comment><USER4> I got the same feeling when I was studying physics and saw those constants! And now I still get it when I see the normal distribution. (e phreak me out more than pi)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "the lattice spacing imposes some additional features on the spectrum. The most striking feature... the cosmic rays would travel preferentially along the axes of the lattice, so we wouldn't see them equally in all directions. "

That assumes an awful lot about a simulation which by definition is not even in this universe. Maybe they would detect a simulation which has those features, but the assumption that it would work like that, because that's how we'd do it here and now in this 3-d space is I think a very tenuous one.

<comment><USER6> That's pretty much the claim, right? Not that this will determine whether or not the universe is a simulation, but that it may determine that it is-- or at least probably is. Simulationism is predicated on the hypothesis that we could construct a completely accurate simulation of our universe _in_ our universe, as if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one, so demonstrating that that's possible would be pretty important.

Personally, my money's on the universe is a simulation of itself.

<comment><USER7> It's not actually a true statement to say that "if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one."

Yes, I've read Bostrom's paper[0], but he misses a key point: the number of rational beings in each simulated universe may decrease exponentially. If, on average over all universes, each rational being simulates only 0.5 rational beings during his or her lifetime, the total number of simulated rational beings would be exactly equal to the total number of unsimulated rational beings, making it equally plausible that we are in the root universe or one of the simulations.

The possibility that rational beings diminish in number exponentially as universes are simulated seems not only plausible, but _likely_ given the nature of the simulations necessary to replicate our universe in all its detail.

[0] <http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html>

<comment><USER6> I think it might be heading down the wrong path to talk in terms of "rational beings" as atomic units rather than in terms of energy (or rather information) balance.

Remember that you _do_ live in a simulation of the universe so compressed it fits between your ears, and it _does_ contain many simulations of other rational actors. They're nowhere near as complex as your whole universe, but I bet they're complex enough to know that they're complex enough.

<comment><USER8> Are you implying that concepts of people in your mind are themselves self aware?

<comment><USER9> Do you think that I am self aware?

Can you predict where I am going with this line of questioning?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> fundamentally, how do we distinguish between 'simulation' and 'reality'? if a simulation (of any sort) exists, it is therefore real. how would a hypothetically 'simulated' universe be any different from a 'real' one?

further, proposed research that seeks to 'reveal' the universe as a 'computer simulation' suggests a limited vision. why must it be a 'computer' doing the simulating? maybe the universe (in some sense) 'computes' itself in coming into existence (think cellular automata or things of the like). if so, then it is not a 'simulation' coming into being, but 'reality' itself.

i will simply state that it is not surprising to me that 'simulations' and 'realities' have much in common -- so it is not surprising that might be mistaken for the other.

in any event, these ideas are off the top my head, i don't know how seriously to take them.

<comment><USER11> My impression is that anything you can simulate via a program could just as well be the fundamental laws of physics -- and vice versa.

The idea behind this line of inquiry - which I hope is continued - seems to be assuming that, if we are simulated, then we are simulated using a similar computation model to our own, and using data structures that we would have come up with ourselves. I don't have better suggestions for which model to use, but it's good to keep in mind that even if one model of a simulation fails to match our physics, then there may just as well be another that does match it.

<comment><USER12> It looks like for a long time we've suspected this strange relationship between our own mathematical inventions (a computer simulation is just a machine that applies a discrete mathematical model), and the universe itself:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences)

It certainly is a mystery. I persnally believe this mystery is logically equivalent to the question "what is existence?" Whether this question is answerable or not, I can't say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting. If you could map out preferred directions in the universe (even if those directions changed across space), you would be able to establish an absolute, universal reference frame. That would be...incredible.

</comment><comment><USER14> If the universe is a "computer simulation" running on the computer called the universe then a computer is a "computer simulation" running on a computer and we all are human simulations running on the computer called the human body.

Occam's razor would say that the simplest explanation is the best. Since this "simulation" works exactly the same as the known universe and we don't know about anything that is outside the universe, we can safely ignore this theory and not lose any information about how the universe works.

<comment><USER15> Apart from the fact that a simulation isn't initiated all by itself, and points to a purpose important to something outside of the simulation.

<comment><USER9> "Initiation" is a four dimensional word.

As our existence is on a four dimensional level, so naturally we see everything as having a start and a finish, i.e. a line on a two dimensional surface.

But there exists situations where there is no start or finish, i.e. a line on a mobius strip. Since we hypothesize that our universe exists on 10 dimensions, we shouldn't assume that our universe's existence has a set start and finish, even though we can only measure back to the big bang.

<comment><USER15> Fair point, but you can take initiation with regards to a simulation as being whatever confluence of events is triggered by something external to the universe to cause the universe/simulation to exist.

Point being is that by definition, a simulation has to simulate something, and therefore needs to exist sometime _after_ the thing it is simulating.

<comment><USER9> Within the constraints of a four dimensions simulation as we know it, of course.

But when you start stretching to simulations on the Nth dimension, you are back to the mobius strip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Everyone knows how software works. You have a program, and you give it to a computer, and the computer conforms itself to the program and instantiates all the rules and carries out the program's instructions. The universe works just the same way, only without the computer. -- the negation of the Simulation Hypothesis

<comment><USER17> Actually there are cannot be variables determining some phenomena <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bell_theorem>

<comment><USER18> Bell's Theorem says there cannot be _local_ variables determining some phenomena. That raises the computational cost of simulating the universe, and shrinks the set of possible universes that could simulate ours, but does not preclude the universe being a simulation.

<comment><USER17> Good point, thanks for correcting me. Can you give a hint how this would raise the computational cost?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I (tried to) read the Beane/Davoudi/Savage paper. I am not a theoretical physicist, but I only vaguely got the feeling that this paper is one of those Markov-Chaining-bot-written papers. I would like to note that it's true: advanced math now looks exactly like the ravings of a madman.

<comment><USER20> Hmm, which paper? Would you link to the PDF?

<comment><USER21> <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.1847v1.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just better not end up being flushed out of a sewer pipe when this is all over. I hate swimming naked.

<comment><USER23> Naw. You're just on the Thirteenth Floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are we really suggesting that people studying cosmic rays would not have already noticed a geometric pattern in their observations? If I were studying cosmic rays, and noticed what appeared to be pixelation in the universe, _you would have heard about it by now_.

<comment><USER13> Not necessarily (if the data exists then this paper would already have referenced it, surely? These are serious scientists at very respectable institutes - the INT at Seattle is highly prestigious). Firstly, you would need to select rays that are very close to the cutoff...the further your distribution slides down the energy axis, the less noticeable your deviation will be. Secondly, you need to orient your distribution geo-spatially, i.e. take into account the Earth's position throughout the measurement. Thirdly, you need to find a way of correcting for all known sources of very high energy cosmic ray background.

I'm not sure whether anyone has ever done all that at once. I'm not saying that they haven't; I'm just not familiar with any measurement that meets all those criteria. I'm not a cosmic physicist though, so it's entirely possible the measurement has been done.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure it's been done. Anisotropic studies of UHECRs is a very popular thing to do for UHECR experiments, almost as popular as looking for neutrinos.

I worked at such an experiment for 4 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you want to read more about the simulation argument, the place to start is Nick Bostrom's page on it: <http://www.simulation-argument.com/>

</comment><comment><USER27> If the universe is a (deterministic?) simulation, would it matter to us if it were actually computed?

And if no, does anyone (or thing) need to come up with the rules for the simulation for us to experience it?

<comment><USER28> No, but knowing the rules would help if we're trying to break them (hack the universe).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's fun to speculate about this (heck, I may even found a religion around it) but there's no way to prove that one is in a simulation.

It's possible that the creators of the simulation do not wish to let the cat out of the bag. Any test which aims to probe the limits of the simulation can, itself, be simulated at higher accuracy with only a slight loss of real-time speed. In fact, it's highly likely that different parts of the universe are simulated with varying amounts of precision.

Heck, even if the simulators goofed, they can always fix the simulation, rewind the universe back to a prior checkpoint, and begin anew.

</comment><comment><USER30> If the universe would be a simulation, then what about the universe in which ours is being simulated? Can we measure that too?

What if the creator of the simulation thought of this and programmed his simulation such that this measurement will not work by making it give fake values for non lattice directions? :p

If the measurement says it's a simulation, who says it really is a simulation? It could just be that physics actually is like that, without any "computer" running it being involved.

<comment><USER31> "You're very clever, young man, very clever, but it's turtles all the way down!"

</comment></comment><comment> wes-exp The argument seems to be that if the smallest workings of space/time exist in discrete points rather than being continuous, then we must be in a simulation, if I understand correctly. Personally I find discrete math much more natural and it's the continuous math that seems imaginary to me. So a discretized universe seems perfectly natural to me, and hardly evidence that it is being simulated.

<comment><USER32> I agree with you about preferring a discrete model of the universe. This may be a common affliction among programmers. For some apparently good theoretical reasons, though, it's a minority opinion among physicists.

There is at least one notable figure who explores the idea: Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft. Here's a recent starting point: <http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=5022>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I had a professor pose a similar idea to a class I was in, the idea being that if a perfectly simulated universe is a technological possibility at some point in the future, and that more than one simulation could be created, and that simulations could be created inside of simulations, and so on for simulations within simulations, then odds are we are in a simulation.

<comment><USER34> Seems your professor never heard of the Halting Problem.

<comment><USER33> It was a political science class, so you're probably right; but how exactly does it apply?

<comment><USER35> It doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Claiming that we're in a simulation because our universe is discrete is wrong on 2 levels.

1\. The discreteness of our universe doesn't say anything about whether we're in a simulation or not. What if the "higher level" universe has indiscrete computers? If our universe is discrete, it can be simulated on a Von Neumann model computer - that's all we can say.

2\. And more importatnly: saying that we're in a simulation actually doesn't mean anything. It is 0 bits of information. Adding this statement to our model of the world is like adding comments to source code or defining a function that is not used. It's like saying that gravity is caused by tiny invisible dwarfs pushing elementary particles.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's amazing what simulated physicists are up to these days.

</comment><comment><USER38> I find it interesting that, at the the end of the article, the point is made that failing to find evidence in the relevant measurement doesn't necessarily indicate that we're _not_ in a simulation, followed straight after by the remark that it is worth making so as to rule out that we're living in one. Isn't that a lot like giving a null hypothesis and suggesting we go out and _prove_ it?

</comment><comment><USER35> Reminds me of "Permutation City" by Greg Egan.

</comment><comment><USER39> If we actually do live in a computer simulation, and scientists carry out research to systematically find and test all the corner cases, we'd better hope they don't trigger a segfault and accidentally destroy the universe :)

</comment><comment><USER40> So, wait. What if our universe is being simulated with 'different' laws of physics? I guess we would never be able to find that out, even if we could somehow conclude it is in fact simulated.

</comment><comment><USER41> Looking for hints of discrete patterns in our universe? Awesome, go ahead.

If you want to make a case of wheter we are in a simulation or not though, you are not in the domains of science anymore.

</comment><comment><USER42> How much of this speculated artifact wouldn't be there if The Great Computer was for example analog, and used polar coordinates to simulate our universe?

</comment><comment><USER43> I like Ian Banks take on this from his book "The Algebraist".

 _"Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion."_

<comment><USER44> The sort of simulation they're talking about here doesn't justify solipsism. Even if it were true, everybody you meet would be just as real as you are.

<comment><USER43> I think you misunderstand the quote. It is not saying that simulation justifies solipsism, just that it belongs to the same family of concepts, along with comedy-gods burying dinosaur bones and stuff like that.

The original context was one character's view of a society in the book that had elevated the theory of existence being a simulation to the status of official dogma.

<comment><USER44> I'm still confused. Are you saying our society has elevated the theory that we're a simulation to the status of dogma? That doesn't match with what I observe. Are you saying it's untestable? That's what the article is about. Are you saying that we have no _a priori_ reason to believe it might be true? If you look at the universe as it appears to be, then it's a justifiable surmise that the majority of humans intelligences that will exist will be in simulations that we will run. That's why people are interested in figuring out if we're the people in the simulations in the first place. I really still don't see why you think the situations are comparable.

<comment><USER43> No, the society in the book did that, I was giving you the context of the quote.

Also, I am not sure that a positive result in that experiment would necessarily prove the hypothesis. The trouble is that if you think you have evidence for the universe being a simulation, you have actually found evidence for any number of things from god to solipsism, depending on what hat you are wearing, but you haven't actually got anywhere and unless you have really exhausted all possible other explanations for what you have measured, then I don't think it is a particularly rational position to take, although it is admittedly quite fun.

Now it could be that we are in a simulation, but if we are, how do you know that anything you detect wasn't put there on purpose to trick you into thinking that you are in a different kind of simulation from the one you are actually in, as a honeypot to fool would be hackers of the simulation? And suddenly we are back in comedy-god land.

<comment><USER45> You are pushing a bit too far there. It's one (bad) thing to say, "my theory is X (a miracle), even though Occam's Razor suggests Y (evolution), and both X and Y explain Z (dino bones), and we agree Z is true".

It is another thing to say, "my theory X (simulation) implies Z (a symmetry- violation), which has no other proposed explanation, and _we have observed Z_ ".

That said, I am more than willing to bet that the lattice will not be discovered.

<comment><USER43> If there are no other explanations that fit the data that anyone has come up with, then fine. But I would not personally be particularly convinced by a simulationist interpretation until I thought that the evidence had been repeatedly tested in a fairly wide variety of ways over a long period of time. For me it is one of the ideas that the phrase "Extraordinary claims must be backed up with extraordinary evidence." was built for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _First, some background. The problem with all simulations is that the laws > of physics, which appear continuous, have to be superimposed onto a discrete > three dimensional lattice which advances in steps of time._

That's only if we assume a digital simulation.

An "advanced civilization" could also run it in some kind of analog computing environment, no?

<comment><USER47> A digital simulation is exactly what they are trying to detect; a quantized lattice forming the observable universe would certainly constitute evidence of such. Not finding such a lattice wouldn't rule out an analog simulation.</comment></comment>


Developer Preview of Android O - <AUTHOR> https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/03/first-preview-of-android-o.html <comment><USER2> I'm most excited about the new APIs for autofilling. Using a password manager on the phone today is a pain. Password filling on webpages and native apps is wonky (to say the least), and most of the time I end up manually coping passwords to clipboard, which is both cumbersome and insecure.

I really hope the major password managers are quick to adopt this, and it improves the current user experience.

"Autofill APIs: Android users already depend on a range of password managers to autofill login details and repetitive information, which makes setting up new apps or placing transactions easier. Now we are making this work more easily across the ecosystem by adding platform support for autofill. Users can select an autofill app, similar to the way they select a keyboard app. The autofill app stores and secures user data, such as addresses, user names, and even passwords. For apps that want to handle autofill, we're adding new APIs to implement an Autofill service."

<comment><USER3> > _Using a password manager on the phone today is a pain._

1Password for Android offers a keyboard replacement. Change to 1P keyboard, use fingerprint to unlock, and it fills automatically user/pass. Very easy and convenient, and more secure than the alternative of copying to clipboard, etc.

ps: no connection to AgileBits, other than being a long time user.

<comment><USER4> But then I have to use their crappy keyboard, which doesn't have all the features of the Google one.

<comment><USER5> You can just switch keyboards when you need to use 1Password. Not optimal, but not a terrible experience either.

<comment><USER6> Which is undoubtedly going to be much better with an official Autofill API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too bad the OEMs don't keep up. Only 2% of devices have Android 7 (N). [http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/android-distribution- new...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/android-distribution-news/)

<comment><USER8> It can't help that Google hasn't released a phone comparable in spirit to the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones.

We're talking about phones that have a practical size, reasonably good specs, and a $300-$400 price tag.

The Nexus 6 and 6P were impractically sized for many users. Even the 5X was too large.

The Pixel's sizing is perhaps more tolerable, but the price tag is much too high.

People hanging on to a Nexus 5 are out of luck, since it isn't getting Android 7 and beyond. Those with a Nexus 4 are even worse off.

While I'd like to use a newer version of Android, I've yet to find a suitable device on the market. Google filled this niche a few years ago, but their recent offerings are no longer suitable.

<comment><USER9> Also the Pixel updates are still held back by phone companies. If they cared about updates or security they would update their phones directly like Apple.

<comment><USER10> Updates are all pushed at the same time when Verizon okays it. They don't want to be on the hook for any regulatory issues like E-911 problems so they test it. They also don't test security updates, only major updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Still no user-grantable audio capture permission…

Why are only OEM-blessed apps allowed to capture system audio output, when any app can already request permission to screen capture?

<comment><USER12> Option 1: DRM concerns (exploiting the "analog hole" on digital level, or HDCP restrictions - how deep is HDCP actually enforced in Android?)

Option 2: Privacy (call recorders come to mind - unrelated: does anyone know of a working call recorder?)

<comment><USER13> I can record calls on iOS

<comment><USER14> So if I call your regular phone number (the one attached to the SIM that's in your iPhone) you can record both sides of the audio for that call?

How?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Fonts are now a fully supported resource type in Android O. Apps can now use > fonts in XML layouts

On the one hand I'm happy they added this, so we don't have to do it programmatically.

On the other hand it took them what, 9 years? It's bizarre that it shipped without the ability to do that in layout.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Notification channels: Android O also introduces notification channels, > which are new app-defined categories for notification content.

FINALLY. I talked to a Google dev about this idea >1 year ago to enthusiasm but I never thought that it would actually be implemented (and I was too darn lazy to work on implementing it myself)... I'm so glad that channels are finally a thing in O! Hopefully they'll also add the ability to put different channels in different named Swipe views so I can flip to different tabs to see different notifications.

</comment><comment><USER17> I want APIs to android apps, I use material notes app as a personal twitter and to track my excercise, I want to schedule a backup of the app, which surprisingly gives you the internal sqlite database, I'd then sync it to my machine using syncthing and then perform analytics on it. I want to eventually be able to sync up everything & make my phone into my personal assistant like it'd suggest me to call up someone I hadn't called in a long time, remember birthdays, and it'd be voice enabled which'd work offline.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wi-Fi Aware looks cool. Something like this has been sorely needed for things like Chromecast setup and local multiplayer games. Has anyone out there used it, or are there no supported devices yet?

<comment><USER19> How is it different to WiFi Direct? Aren't there quite a lot of these wifi- without-base-station standards, but they never seem to work or take off?

<comment><USER20> WiFi Direct differs from WiFi Awareness in respect to the presence of the access point. In WiFi direct, there is no access point, and the devices connect directly to each other. With WiFi Awareness, an access point serves as a middle-man, but it is not necessary to access the Internet.

<comment><USER21> And neither of the two seems to have a defined minimum list of services like Bluetooth has via its profiles.

Seems Google is leaving it up to the app devs to come up with services, to expect a whole lot of silos to sprout, balkanizing the system.

On that note, i seem to recall Mozilla tried to build something similar into their Firefox for Android at some point. But i can't relocate it now because i can't recall what "catchy" codename they had on the project.

<comment><USER22> FlyWeb? [https://flyweb.github.io/](https://flyweb.github.io/)

<comment><USER21> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any dibs on what it's going to be named? An obvious one is "Oreo", but that's trademarked. "Oatmeal cookie" is the only O dessert I can think of that isn't.

<comment><USER24> There's Oreillettes at least, a yummy donut from south of France. Also, Kitkat is trademarked and there was an Android Kitkat.

[https://gherkinstomatoes.com/2010/12/13/oreillettes-a- part-o...](https://gherkinstomatoes.com/2010/12/13/oreillettes-a-part-of- provences-thirteen-desserts/)

<comment><USER23> I'm aware of KitKat, but I'm skeptical of such a deal happening again.

<comment><USER25> Why is that? It seems like a beneficial arrangement for both parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Finally color management. Everybody nowadays speaks about HDR etc. but Android was still stuck on SRGB and could not even convert wide color images to SRGB.

</comment><comment><USER27> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924269).

</comment><comment><USER28> Another opportunity wasted to create a unified Android driver model that would allow easy upgrades.

<comment><USER29> The Android driver model is not what holds back updates. Time and monetary cost of OEM customizations, subsequent carrier bloat, and testing (all performed in series) are what hold back upgrades.

<comment><USER30> Agree. Driver abstraction layers are not a cure-all. First, OEMs want to customize the O/S above the driver level. Second, a strict DAL with a canonical O/S on top slows hardware innovation. All devices end up functionally the same because they have to fit the same DAL, and they can't customize the O/S to take advantage of new HW.

Take Android Wear. It took the DAL approach. As a result, O/S upgrades are immediately available to all devices (awesome!). But there is very little differentiation - all Wear devices use the same small set of SoC's and peripherals, and are functionally the same. Google decides on HW innovations.

(This was true of Wear 1.0, not sure if changed with Wear 2.0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> the multi-display thing makes me ponder a RPi Android "desktop" or similar.

Seems that slowly Google is coming round to where Android was heading back around 3.x-4.0.

<comment><USER31> _> the multi-display thing makes me ponder a RPi Android "desktop" or similar._

I think this is Google's response to Continuum.

If Microsoft comes out with a really good implementation of a docked phone, Google needs to have a response ready for their platform. Normal users probably won't care, but anyone who is interested in productivity knows how crucial a monitor and multi-window/tasking support is.

It usually takes 1 or 2 release cycles for Google to finalize a feature, so by starting now they're signaling intent to have some kind of mature feature by 2018-19.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> hm is this the one that won't make it to my phone, a nexus 6 (2014)? sigh.

<comment><USER33> 5x, too, I think.

<comment><USER34> The 5x and 6p should get it (Unless Qualcomm decides to screw everyone over ... which sadly won't surprise me).

The general Google Android life cycle is 2 major OS versions and 1 year of security patches so the 5x which is on N now should get O, and then spend 2018 getting security patches until it is EOL'd.

The Nexus 6 is done now though for no other reason that Qualcomm doesn't care and Google only acts like they only about you having Play Services and the Play Store. Maybe a miracle will happen this year...

<comment><USER35> 5x, 6P, Player, Pixel C, Pixel, Pixel XL are all listed on the downloads page for this developer preview [1]. Seems like these would be likely to get the final release.

[1] [https://developer.android.com/preview/download.html#flashabl...](https://developer.android.com/preview/download.html#flashable- images)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Would be awesome if it worked on my Nexus 4.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if the Material Design yellow circles are intended to allude to a sun, and that this will be called Android Orbit? (As in the candy Orbit Gum)

</comment><comment><USER38> > AAudio API for Pro Audio

Android has gone all the way from A to O (15 versions) but still can't do what the first gen iPod touch could do.

<comment><USER39> And the NDK developer experience is still pretty awful compared with what C and C++ developers have at their disposal on iOS and UWP SDKs.

[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=2&q=NDK&so...](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=2&q=NDK&sort=-opened&colspec=ID%20Status%20Priority%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars%20Reporter%20Opened)

<comment><USER40> That's actually one reason (well, among many, many others) I don't develop anything for Android except some toy apps I made for my kids (using a third- party C++ development kit). There's something about the entire Java ecosystem that just grates on me in a way that no other language does, and years ago when I first dipped my foot into mobile development on Android it seems like that OS amplified it all. I can't even explain it.

<comment><USER41> What is your opinion on Dart? I could see Google encouraging devs to learn Dart and make Flutter apps soon. Probably at I/O.

<comment><USER39> It is not Google encouraging devs, it is the Dart team looking for reasons to keep going, besides Ad Words.

Just go watch any Android Fireside at Google IO or the responses of Android team at Reddit.

Java is Android's language, with C and C++ just being there to the extent of implementing Java _native_ methods, low latency code and code from other platforms, not full blown access to the OS APIs.

As an example of an discussion regarding Scala, after their annoucement to ditch Jack and start anew their cherry picked features from Java 8.

"Java is the language we officially support."

[https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/5zf1xo/future_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/5zf1xo/future_of_java_8_language_feature_support_on/deyyp0n/)

<comment><USER41> Yeah but what about Flutter? It's even part of Fuchsia, their new OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> So they will be introducing picture-in-picture support?

If they start allowing YouTube to work with the PiP feature on iPads (which it always could with third-party workarounds, but not in the official app [1]) after this, then it'll be confirmed that they purposely disabled the feature on iOS only to retain artificial parity with Android, which would be a very scummy behavior.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5lxm6c/why_is_google...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5lxm6c/why_is_google_working_so_hard_to_deliberately/)

<comment><USER43> High end samsung firmware has PIP support, can confirm that (samsung) PIP works perfectly with youtube. Apple might need to communicate better with the youtube folks.

<comment><USER44> It's just an API to implement. But YouTube for iOS in general is a dreadful piece of software so not surprised they haven't done it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > AAudio API for Pro Audio: AAudio is a new native API that's designed > specifically for apps that require high-performance, low-latency audio.

It's always seemed so weird to me how terrible audio latency is... not just on android, but also on consoles (guitar hero, rockband etc), where it makes them utterly unplayable as instruments - I'm thinking mainly of the drumkits here.

Yes, iPhone is _better_ than android, but it's still not workable as an instrument.

OTOH fully electronic digital instruments have been mainstream for decades. Is it because we are somehow able to accept terrible _visual_ latency in games (recently exacerbated by network latency)? And so our systems get optimized for throughput performance (resolution, fps etc) at the cost of latency? Though the latency problem rears its ugly head again in VR. Seems to need to be sub 10-15ms, end-to-end (from human input to output), for both VR visual and audio.

Anyway, I think better audio latency requires a redesign of the entire system, and it's not clear than this new API has that support behind it.

<comment><USER39> I assume this API is based on the work of Samsung has done for their own private APIs.

[http://developer.samsung.com/galaxy/professional- audio](http://developer.samsung.com/galaxy/professional-audio)

Last Google IO they had a session about all workarounds for improving the audio developers experience and they got Samsung on stage to talk about their SDK.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ZDp- eNrh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ZDp-eNrh4)</comment></comment>


Programming a Multicore Architecture Without Coherency, Atomic Operations (2014) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://eprints.eemcs.utwente.nl/24377/01/Rutgers_-_Programming_a_Multicore_Architecture_without_Coherency_and_Atomic_Operations.pdf <comment><USER2> How does the stalling on a black hole work? Does it just busy-wait?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it's not really detailed, which is unfortunate. Since it specifies that the process "stalls" one would expect busy-wait being the only viable strategy.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your go to source/website for startup knowledge? - <AUTHOR> I understand there is Paul Graham Blogs, A16Z Podcasts Start-up school(These are the ones I frequently visit), various individual blogs and videos to know what to do in different stages of start-up. But is there a single repository for all these things where I can go to? <comment><USER2> [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/) and [https://justinjackson.ca/](https://justinjackson.ca/)

IndieHackers gives you insight into who the startup founders are, what they did, and even how much they are making a month.

JustinJackson is a pretty smart guy who failed at a startup (maybe more), but learned his lessons and is not shy to share any of that information.

<comment><AUTHOR> No doubt Indie Hacker is great source learn directly from others' experience.

But I was looking something which covers more about fundamentals and used case. Like why to startup/ when to start/ who should be in your team etc. [https://justinjackson.ca/](https://justinjackson.ca/) definitely looks like something which I am looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have visited several resources to get a fundamental understanding of startup decision making, by which I mean what to do, most importantly, why and when. I personally use [https://startupresources.io/index.html](https://startupresources.io/index.html) and [http://startupstash.com/](http://startupstash.com/) to find great resources to test my ideas.</comment>


Ask HN: So, how did the recent PR advice work for you? - <AUTHOR>

Following on from the two recent topics on HN,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341138 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=351709
How has the advice given in those two threads worked out for you?
I've been promoting one of my apps (http://www.whos-playing.com) on relevant Facebook groups, I also submitted it to Stumbleupon and I've been pushing it out to blogs & podcasts.
I've had little or no traffic from Facebook, Stumbleupon gave a good spike the day I submitted it, but since then not a single referral.
There's a little bit of interest from blogs & podcasts, but no actual coverage yet, however I admit this is an area that needs more work on my part.
There's more I can do on Facebook, and the blogs, but how as the advice you got from HN helped promote your app? <comment><USER2> There's no way that advice given within the last week can be delivering big wins already. I would be very keen, however, to hear people who have been using the ideas outlined in the long-term. There are no quick wins in promotion, because you have thousands of other people against you, and getting people's attention is hard.

One downside to your particular situation is that your app is both soccer related and relating to reasonably competitive matches (that is, not just a kick around, but actually "organizing players" and the like). In this case, I'd say your app is _so_ specific to a certain demographic that you need to narrow in on that demographic very tightly and focus on it alone. You're less likely to find your ideal market in general areas online and on highly specific forums, Facebook groups, real life, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I find testers? (alternative audio) - <AUTHOR> I have created an application that allows someone to dub a live video. Viewers that have installed the companion Chrome extension can watch the same live video (ex: a YouTube live video) with the alternative audio (sync'd). I am looking for viewers/testers. They will need a Chrome browser and will watch a YouTube video for 10-15 mins. (If interested, shoot me an email: email@example.com) <comment><USER2> Have you checked out [https://betafamily.com/](https://betafamily.com/) ?</comment>


Rust Mutation Testing - <AUTHOR> https://llogiq.github.io/2016/03/24/mutest.html <comment><USER2> Is that approach a common one in better mutation tools? I've never had an opportunity to use one, unfortunately, I've only used ones that worked by modifying source code over and over. It seems much more effective than repeated compilation.

<comment><USER3> It depends very much on the language, e.g. common Java tools work with byte code at runtime (so no 'recompilation' is necessary), and tools for scripting languages have no option but to generate source.

Actually the approach has a weakness: The code may have hidden state that could change test results between runs. As mutations need to run the code many times, this can skew the results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Note that this was the first thing that came to mind, after some discussion with other Rustaceans I think I found a way to allow for more mutations with only little overhead.

</comment><comment><USER4> Let the Rust vs Go fight begin.

<comment><USER5> Care to elaborate?

The article doesn't mention Go at all.</comment></comment>


A plan to rescue western democracy from the ignorant masses [satire] - <AUTHOR> http://www.karlremarks.com/2016/06/a-plan-to-rescue-western-democracy-from.html <comment><AUTHOR> I had to mark this as satire because the article referred to [https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/28/its-time-for-the- elites...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/28/its-time-for-the-elites-to- rise-up-against-ignorant-masses-trump-2016-brexit/) is apparently not satire, nor this other one "Why Elections are Bad for Democracy" [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/29/why- election...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/29/why-elections- are-bad-for-democracy)</comment>


Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance - <AUTHOR> https://www.sicpers.info/2019/10/zen-and-the-art-of-software-maintenance/ <comment><USER3> After I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I went and bought myself a '71 Honda CB350, almost the exact bike Pirsig rode in his book. I found that fixing this motorcycle, taking it apart, fixing internal component, figuring out how everything ties together, and upgrading worn out or otherwise non-functional components, and putting it all back together, felt extraordinarily similar to my day job as a software engineer. There's even the same "loop": fix one thing, turn it on to test, then turn it off again and fix the next thing. The turnaround time is waaaaayy slower, and there's a lot more opportunity to hurt yourself, but the skills as a programmer translate very well to motorcycle maintenance. Interesting to see that I'm not the only one who sees these similarities.

<comment><USER4> And yet, even after seeing firsthand that computer programming is "extraordinarily similar" to the work of a vehicle mechanic, you still refer to it as "software _engineering_ ".

Do we think it has anything in common with engineering? Why not call your work something like "software mechanic" or "software artisan"? What is with the continued need for programmers to try to aspire to engineering, while not actually being licensed engineers or practicing engineering?

I don't think anyone outside the field takes programmers any more seriously when they call themselves "software engineers". Software overall is still late, slow, hard to use, buggy, and insecure. Nobody's fooling anyone.

<comment><USER5> To engineer something is, apparently, by definition, to "design, build, and maintain [a physical thing]".

What I do as a developer is "design, build, and maintain" some software, and while it may not be physical, the use of the software is a physical activity. In this way, software has a physical existence at the very end of the process, same as a bridge or other object, though you just touch or fiddle with it through an intermediary physical object.

I'm not sure I see why someone would be upset about use of the term engineer, unless they are an engineer and somehow see developers as 'other' and it makes them angry that someone may be intruding into what they perceive as some private club.

Besides, I didn't decide to be called a "Software Engineer", that was a title bestowed upon me by a company. Before that I called myself a "programmer" and that's what I tell people I am. Now that I know "software engineer" might annoy someone and/or make me seem loftier / more worth taking seriously, perhaps I'll start calling myself an engineer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone in our circle of nerds recommends this book and all three times I tried to read it I found it absolutely unbearable. It collects dust in a donation box that I haven't mustered the strength to carry down to goodwill.

Does anyone else share this sentiment? Did you ever crack the reason why so many love it? Obviously taste is subjective and we are not all supposed to like everything but I've always felt like the odd man out with this specific text.

<comment><USER7> I wholeheartedly agree. "Pretentious" is the word I would use for it. "Insincere" is another.

<comment><USER8> I also dislike the book. As someone who loves motorcycles and fixing an old Honda myself, it is something I want to love. To me, the protagonist is trying to show how smart he is after reading some intro to philosophy book.

<comment><USER9> It made a lot of sense to me as an undergrad philosophy student, reading it shortly after I graduated. IMHO the book is somewhat better if understood as a criticism of the Socratic pursuit of universal Truth if you are familiar with the context. But unfortunately this book is recommended to a general audience, for which I think it is a poor novel.

Pirsig did have at least some formal academic knowledge of philosophy though.

From Wikipedia [0]:

> Pirsig earned a bachelor's degree in 1950 from the University of > Minnesota.[8] He then attended Banaras Hindu University in India, to study > Eastern philosophy and culture. At the University of Chicago, he performed > graduate-level work in philosophy in the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas > and Study of Methods but he did not obtain a degree there. In 1958 he earned > a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Early_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Early_life)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In Pirsig's second book, Lila, he returns to examine what the romantic- classical synthesis looks like from another perspective: the _moral_ perspective. He imagines the moral qualities of the world. What are the moral qualities of a motorcycle? How ought a motorcycle to behave?

Pirsig proposes a thought experiement, the "chemistry teacher" experiment, where a chemistry teacher is left on a beach to rot. Through this experiment, he concludes that the morality of chemical objects, of atoms and molecules, is precisely the rules of chemistry. Indeed, Pirsig supposes that most of the natural world is like this, where things do as they ought already.

(I would close the door by suggesting that, in the Discordian tradition, the morality of people, and indeed any sapient creature, is to _do as we like_. This not only neatly lines up with Pirsig's philosophy, but also gives that the Free Will Theorem still holds and is useful!)

So, what is the morality of software and computers? The morality of physical computers is quantum electronics, and the morality of software is information theory and mathematics itself. I'm humbled.

<comment><USER11> Metaphysics considers the possibility of a universes with properties different than ours.

If such things exist, then things in our universe behave as they are more than any ought.

<comment><USER12> Metaphysics is more philosophy than physics

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I must be pretty confused to post a comment about metaphysics in reply to a comment discussing the morality of chemistry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At the end of day, the customer does not care if, for example, you implemented their project as giant if-then conditional; as long as it works. It is the craftsman in us that makes us write quality code; it is something we ultimately do for ourselves.

<comment><USER14> At the end of the day, it's a lot less likely to work if you write a giant if condition. So yes, the customer won't care _why_ it works or doesn't - <USER2> quality code has impacts they can feel.

<comment><USER15> My experience has also been it's a not-entirely-Zen experience extending giant if conditions even if they technically work fine for the current use case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel every chapter from this book can be pulled out and can be converted into a blogpost in its own right.

This blogpost touches only on a chapter of the book.

Nevertheless, nice, short read.

<comment><USER17> Are you talking about "zen and the art...", or are you talking about a book by the author of the blog post?

<comment><USER18> The Pirsig book, I'm sure.</comment></comment></comment>


Hackers now offering 'botnet-as-a-service' - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/178709/researchers-discover-45-million-strong-super-botnet

<comment><USER2> Mobsters have accountants, drug dealers make loans, and I'll bet even hitmen have todo lists.

Illegal operations function using the same business machinery that legal businesses do, so we shouldn't be surprised to see them adopting current trends such as the SaaS model.

Don't get me wrong... it's very interesting, and before reading this article I was unaware of it. It's just not surprising.</comment>


Do we need NASA? - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/Do-we-need-NASA/2009-11397_3-6211308.html?tag=nefd.pop <comment><USER2> It's always easier to criticize. The problem is that space travel is very, very, very hard. In that regard the Cold War was the best thing that ever happened to space exploration: two super powers spending crazy amount of money and human effort to beat each other 'who's gonna do THAT first?'. I think it was awesome: the best kind of competition you can have, almost like a high school science contest on a giant scale.

If you look around at other countries in the "space club" the situation is not much different. Launching 1gk of _anything_ so high is so expensive that it makes very little economic sense. Private sector will never launch anything to Mars. Why would they? Private investors would never build a giant space station just to run a bunch of experiments on it.

The main message this article is trying to send is a bit creepy one (IMO): "NASA, you should do some kick-ass research using our tax dollars, and we'll be trying to make money out of what you will come up with". The problem with it is that only small percentage of what can be done in space is profitable: satellites, high-altitude tourism... that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I often wonder what could be achieved by privateers with just a fraction of NASA's annual funding. Just look at the incredible pace that X-Prize teams develop on comparatively minuscule budgets!

If you think about it, the situation mirrors that of startups. A small team of "hackers" can now build aeronautical technology better, faster, and cheaper than the big behemoth NASA can. And the reasons are also similar, in that it now costs less to build spacecraft than it used to.

Incidentally, some of these space "startups" are run by hackers. Like Armadillo Aerospace, which was co-founded by id Software's John Carmack. I guess hacking on aeronautics is in the same spirit as hacking on software.

I would really like to see what this article proposes: Focus on giving money to space "startups" and let NASA focus on the things that a slower moving, big company can do well, like research.

<comment><USER4> It gets a lot harder to engineer an orbital craft and I don't see a hacker- type startup building an orbital manned spacecraft anytime soon.

<comment><USER5> SpaceX Falcon 9 / Dragon?

<comment><USER4> I'm glad people are trying, I will be very impressed when they launch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We could have funded ten missions to Mars with the money that the corporations stole from the US people and laundered through Iraq.

So no, we don't need NASA, but it represents a perfectly reasonable way to spend enormous amounts of money.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a big aviation and space junkie, this has been buggin' me for some time.

I remember the astronauts on the moon (I was but a wee lad at the time) saying that in a few years, the new Space Shuttle would be hauling up cargo every week or so into earth orbit. Our new space pickup truck would mean space access for all.

It was all BS. In fact, there is a long list of BS that we've heard about NASA. The problem is that, just like big IT, NASA is big space. It works under the idea that one big honking agency can do everything for everybody. And when you really look at it, NASA is all about politics and not performance, as it is with most programs run by politicians.

NASA needs to do one thing: reduce cost to orbit by developing/sponsoring new high-risk technologies. If they can whack cost to orbit by a factor of a hundred, the market will take care of the rest. We won't have these political debates about whether to fix the Hubble ST because it will cost something like $100K to go up there and do it. Reducing cost to orbit just will change everything -- that is, if we can get them to do it.

This is kind of like IT was in the days before Apple. To do anything, you had to have a lot of money and staff. I'm looking forward to the day when space is much more like YC and the current startup world -- anybody with a small amount of money can get into the game and play with the big boys. We should encourage that progression. We need to for our survival, imo.

</comment><comment><USER7> NASA is highly overestimated. They still didn't figure out how to land on sun.

/sarcasm</comment>


How I tried to crowdfund my tuition, but got 20 potential clients instead - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/03/22/tried-crowdfund-tuition-got-20-potential-clients-instead/ <comment><USER2> I like the general idea, but (to me) the investment seems way too low. $1000 for a full-fledged game, and you plan to make 8 of them? In what time frame? It also seems like this class is for people completely new to Obj-C and the like. I have to wonder how realistic it is to expect to be pumping out that quantity of games the moment you finish a two-month course.

Let's say (hugely optimistically) you work your butt off and complete all 8 games within a year. You just used a whole year to make $8000 that you've already spent.

Again, I like the idea, but I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all price that will be fair to either party. I hope you've explored the legal ramifications of this setup. If you can't make the games in a reasonable time frame, are you going to be on the hook for all this money?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey wizzard, rightly said. Not all apps can be finished in such limited time. That's why, I'm not accepting ideas that might take long, even if they are damn interesting. I am very carefully choosing the ideas, that are good but feasible to finish in a month. I am talking to people in detail to understand their requirements before committing anything.

Secondly, though I m taking full responsibility of delivering these (and I'm great with my commitments), I've many friends who are into app development, and some of my would be colleagues at summer academy - they have shown interest in this and are going to help me finish these apps.

<comment><USER3> Keep it up! Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kudos man. But seriously have you considered using the $10,000 and moving to a cheap city like Goa / Bangalore / staying where-ever you are and spending some time deep diving into iOS programming using best-selling books on Amazon and iTunes courses from Stanford?

I know MakeGamesWithUs is a YC backed company and they aren't just another run of the mill rip-off bootcamp that are popping up each day, still it'd make fiscal sense to consider the alternative scenario.

There are a lot of pros to attending one of these bootcamps: community / structure / mentorship / retaining IP to your creation / networking / companies that might be recruiting but if you are motivated enough just stumbling along yourself and associating with a local dev shop might also work wonders without burning a hole in your pocket (despite the fact that your are not paying out of pocket and crowd-funding this).

But anyways good luck to you with it, and I wish you success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate your thoughts not_paul_graham, and totally agree with the logic behind your arguments. But for me, this course is more than just a coding experience. Living a valley experience so closely, among the kind of people attending the program has a value beyond what can be explained, at least for me. It is just like quesitoning the value of an elite MBA (that breaks-even after 3-4 years on average), which a lot of gurus are questioning these days. I might learn equally sitting in Bangalore, in one tenth the cost, but I really believe that there can be stark differences in terms of nuances, personality traits, friendships and work opportunities, if I don't attend this course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> nishithfrrole, you appear to be shadowbanned (comments appearing dead). Not sure why, I see nothing objectionable in comment history. Thought you should know.

<comment><USER6> Did you see the recent change in how comments are submitted?

New comments now go to a queue where they are invisible until they approved by trusted users.

<comment><USER7> I thought that was only for a few hours and then turned off again and never turned on again? At least I haven't seen 'endorse' buttons anywhere.

<comment><USER6> You apparently need to have at least 1k internet points.

<comment><USER7> PG said he lowered it to 500.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I built a decently good-looking Asteroids clone using SpriteKit during the iOS 7 beta, and a pretty polished iOS 2048 implementation more recently. Both projects took a little longer than a weekend, and I don't consider myself a particularly talented developer. The iOS ecosystem has lots of tooling and libraries that make building simple games quite easy, so a month per game can be quite doable (depending on the kind of game, of course).

<comment><AUTHOR> austinz, this is surely some inspiration. Would love to connect. My email is in my profile. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good stuff Vikas!! It's not easy to raise money in India (esp through crowdsourced funding) and you seemed to have already made good progress. Focus, choose your projects (games) wisely and I am sure you will do well.

</comment><comment><USER10> Has elements of _The Unincorporated Man_ to it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unincorporated_Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unincorporated_Man)</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to start learning Android with PHP Background? - <AUTHOR>

I am PHP Developer for now. I want to learn android from scratch.<p>what is the best way to start learning Android? What are best resources for android development (Blog/Tutorials/Courses)? <comment><USER2> Honestly, once you dive into it, there's no real dedicated website for walking you through (I could be wrong here). You just kind of Google everything; however, you gotta know what you need to search for when it comes to Android/Java stuff.

I believe the Android API Documentation has an installation walk-through and even a few tutorials, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google has some options for newbies, like the «Building Your First App» tutorial that you will find from this page: [http://developer.android.com/training/index.html](http://developer.android.com/training/index.html) That's where I've started.

</comment><comment><USER4> Udacity now have Android courses in partnership with Google : [https://plus.google.com/+AndroidDevelopers/posts/jmSk2az9715](https://plus.google.com/+AndroidDevelopers/posts/jmSk2az9715)</comment>


Xkcd #2178: Expiration Date High Score - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/2178/ <comment><USER2> Not quite. If she finds a jar now, the score would be 110.8, if she waits for 2030, it goes down to 108.3</comment>


Kano: A computer and coding kit for ages 6-12 - <AUTHOR> http://us.kano.me/products/kano-kit <comment><USER2> That looks neat, a bit pricey though. snap circuits focuses more on the assembly side which is also good : [http://www.snapcircuits.net/](http://www.snapcircuits.net/)

<comment><USER3> 100$ for a RasPi, case, wifi dongle, mmc, cables and keyboard isn't that high, you won't find much cheaper kits even if you are counting in the chinese knockoff's (which aren't necessarily bad, some of the chinese SBC's are one of the better ones as far as performance go on the market especially when PPP goes). The only thing that you can fault them atm is not having enough kit extensions like various IOT and PLC devices or kits that use the GPIO on the Pi but those can come in the future and they much more software design oriented than builder oriented.

What is sad tho is that Lego had this and much more like 10 years ago but never got anywhere close to the level of coverage this gets [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms) They also had a line for schools I remember actually having electromechanical legos to play with in primary school in the mid 90's and it seems they developed them more and more [http://ceeo.tufts.edu/documents/journal/1999bemccr.pdf](http://ceeo.tufts.edu/documents/journal/1999bemccr.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 189.99 GBP for a kit+screen version, seriously? A child will be better suited with a new laptop for the same price (it can be coloured if you wish) and install the software needed for art, creativity, programming or anything else interested in.

PS: "Award-winning design, based on 10,000 hours with educators, artists, and kids." -> Who awarded for this design? I am really concerned if that's all you could deliver after spending 10,000 hours.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've actually convinced my 13 year old niece and 11 year old nephew to learn to code. I know there are a lot of financial benefits to doing so, but I'm trying my best to have them focus on just making things that solves some of their problems.

I have much younger nieces, perhaps this can be a little Xmas gift for them.

</comment><comment><USER6> I work for Kano - anyone got any questions?

<comment><USER7> Aren't you worried about kids handling a bare circuit board without an anti- static strap, or even without discharging themselves first? I didn't see anything about that in the instruction manual preview.

<comment><USER6> Interesting question! The answer is that it's pretty rare for anyone to break the board in this way. If they did, I'm sure we'd replace it, but although we have shipped a lot of kits now, last I heard there weren't any returns where the board was zapped. There is a degree of ESD protection designed onto both the chip and the board.</comment></comment></comment>


MIT drug could kill nearly any viral infection - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/mit-drug-could-kill-nearly-any-viral-infection-20110815/

<comment><USER2> Wow, look at any top 10 list of deadly diseases and at least half (Malaria, Cholera, Influenza, HIV/AIDS, Small Pox, Ebola, etc) are viral.

If we can check those off now, the researchers are going to the top of the Nobel Prize list and ultimately save millions of lives a year. Quite an achievement.

Still, they had better think through the consequence since any drug that can penetrate _all_ your cells and destroy them could be worse than the disease.</comment>


Amazon Doesn't Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/ <comment><USER2> First, I don't think at all race or demographic makeup was ever a component in Amazon's decision-making process. But that said, it doesn't mean that cold, logical, analytical decision making doesn't have repercussions that align perfectly with race and class.

Yes, this is really just representative of a larger, unrelated issue of persistent segregation an income disparity in these cities, but it doesn't mean that in some way Amazon isn't unintentionally contributing to the issue. When underserved areas are underserved because they're underserved, it becomes an issue.</comment>


Apple: iCloud Website Sign-In with Touch/Face ID iOS 13, iPadOS, and macOS Betas - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/08/icloud-sign-in-face-id-touch-id-ios-13-beta/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm eager to implement this as a 3rd party service on the web. I know it will give me some headache with the fake email relay service, but i do welcome this for the web ecosystem.

It's not clear if this will work as seamlessly on _NOT_ Apple's web logins.</comment>


Micro-Apartments: Boston's Housing Solution Or Developers' Cash Cow? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbur.org/2014/02/17/micro-apartments-boston

<comment> mal-2 The housing situation in Boston is at crisis level already with no signs of improving. This city has some of the best schools in the country and attracts some of the most ambitious and passionate young people in the world but can't figure out how to house them or transport them.

Busses and trains are invariably packed beyond capacity, no one can afford their own place, and landlords aren't held accountable for property quality. Blame decades of zoning laws and historical fetishism that prevented high rises from being built and kept us all in buildings with single pane windows and only three bedrooms. At least they have pretty old bricks outside....

</comment><comment><USER2> The micro-apartment in this story seemingly includes large common areas, including a reservable conference room. That's a great idea, I'm not sure I've seen much of that in SF.

But then, each unit has its own clothes washer/dryer. That seems really inefficient in terms of unused space and appliances (not to mention added water and drain infrastructure throughout the building). Putting a laundry room in the basement, or mabye one on every floor, with coin-op machines seems like a much better idea all around. Most older apartment buildings have this arrangement, so it's not something unusual.

</comment><comment><USER3> people in Boston, or any major metropolitan city are (to be politically correct) mentally handicapped thinking that $1700 per month for 450 sq ft of space is ok.

I have my own consulting business out in the midwest. All my clients are remote, and in January I paid around 33% (utilities included) of that rent figure for my housing, for approx. 4x's the sq ft, and made almost 15x's the above figure last month.

<comment><USER4> It's expensive, but there's culture there you can't replace.

You can live in a shack in the woods for next to nothing, but do your peers live there? Are you comfortable remoting in? Can you meet with investors who work in or near Boston on a moment's notice?

The solution here is not to push people out of the cities but to make the cities more livable for those that want to live there.

You have a great consulting business, but living way outside of an urban area is a lifestyle is not for everyone.</comment></comment>