Osmium

> They demand always-on Internet to connect to the cloud.

It's interesting, you're talking about a syncing system (syncing requires connectivity) and have an issue with requiring access to one of the most convenient sources of connectivity, which is the internet.

We're in a transition time right now. Access to the internet is not always available. It is not always fast. But this time will pass. It makes sense, to me, to design for this future.

> I'm trying to rewrite my own ecosystem one app at a time [...] I must make my own.

I sympathize with this (and good luck!). But I could spend a lot of effort organizing my digital life, but (for me) it feels like I would be a slave to this effort, and what does it get me, really? I spent a long time organizing my digital movie collection; now most films I want to watch are on streaming services. I spent a long time organizing music; now Apple Music and Spotify are much more convenient.

There was an essay from a while back floating around online about the ever-increasing burden of organizing our digital lives. I wish I could find it now, but it really summarized a lot of what I feel about this.

> It's very valid criticism. I was hoping that with the move to Qi for wireless, Apple would also move to USB-C for wired charging.

I imagine they're hoping to get rid of the charging port altogether, so don't see the point of changing now. I would prefer one standard also though. That said, I imagine this is some time off, given Qi's charging speeds.

> I can understand the compromise of the "notch" for the sensor bar in portrait-oriented UIs.

Me too. Still, it'll be nice if there's an option to disable the notch and just use a slightly shorter display. There are no doubt Apple engineers out there who want this, so I hope it's a hidden accessibility setting :)

That's true, but that sounds more like an additional layer to communicate charging info, negotiate which devices should get more power, etc.

I do half-suspect Apple probably tried coming up with a better solution (e.g. one not involving a charging mat), but ran into technical (probably laws-of-physics) challenges and went with Qi instead, because otherwise there's really no reason they couldn't have done this earlier. Or perhaps they just needed the time to re-tool for a glass case, who knows.

> I see that as a hassle, not a feature.

I said this in another thread, but it really doesn't seem unreasonable to require your attention to unlock your phone, since it requires your attention in order to use it!

It really is the speed that will make or break this feature. If it's slow, forget it, if it's quicker than it takes you to move your thumb to the screen, then it probably won't matter to most people.

> Neat, wireless charging, exactly like I had on my Nexus 5, around 5 years ago :)

And I think we can all be grateful Apple decided to go with the Qi standard here rather than roll their own! What a mess that would have been...

True, but capacitive multi-touch hasn't been the only innovation in the iPhone over the years. We forget just how limited the original iPhone was (no 3G, slow CPU -- it took ages to render a webpage, even though it was a huge step up over its contemporaries, it was still barely fit for purpose, no App Store either).

I think the slides in the keynote were actually on-point for this, there've been multiple innovations (multi-touch, high-DPI screens, Touch ID, their shift to in-house processors, computational photography), and it's really the aggregate that's lead to a great device. But break it down and it is an iterative, evolutionary process. That's why so many people often seem disappointed after every keynote!

That said, maybe the original iPhone really was a bit special :-)

> Feels like a straight downgrade in usability.

You know, it really depends how fast it is. You need attentiveness to use your phone, so requiring attentiveness to unlock it doesn't seem unreasonable, provided it happens in less time than it takes to move your thumb to the glass.

> Do you think phones are a "done" thing? I mean what we are seeing these days is more of an evolution than revolution.

It's always been an evolution. What we're seeing now is a trend towards cellular everywhere, and device-agnostic services (same phone number on your Apple Watch as your iPhone). The next shift seems like it will be greater situational awareness in your devices -- your device can understand its surroundings (ARKit), and what you look like (Face ID).

So phones as a category may lose their uniqueness, in that other devices can fill the same roll, but I think we'll always see an evolution of a phone -- that is, a pocketable connected computing device.

Does a credit freeze stop you from accessing your free credit scores (e.g. CreditKarma, Mint etc.)?

In fairness, SpaceX is going to have real production line issues of its own to sort out -- how many landed rockets do they have in warehouses now waiting for refurbishment? Both companies are going to need to get good at this.

I don't know, lab tests in a hospital go off to be analyzed somewhere. I think there's a healthy middle ground between "do it all yourself" and "let's store the results on a server connected to the internet indefinitely."

I agree that an affordable SNP chip you could use at home would be amazing though.

I used 23andMe, and was a happy customer, but asked them to delete my data after -- I wasn't comfortable with them keeping that information (on a long enough timescale, everyone is hacked... or there may be regulatory issues with health insurance one day etc.)

I do wonder if they really deleted my data though?

Would pay 10x what 23andMe asks for a similar service if they gave you only an offline copy of your data, didn't store it on their servers, but also an offline app to analyze your results. There are some open source solutions[0] out there but they're not as user friendly yet.

[0] https://github.com/mentatpsi/OSGenome, https://www.snpedia.com

This question is asked literally every time there's an Apple event :)

HTTP Live Streaming streams can be viewed with VLC. It's also a open standard[0] (though not yet a formal standard); it's not proprietary.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/streaming/

> Perhaps this will be the "Big Bang" for consumer AR that everyone has been hoping for.

I wouldn't expect it this year. ARKit is clearly their open beta so developers can get their apps ready, consumers can get used to the idea etc. ... if they are making something like AR glasses, I wouldn't expect it for a year or two yet.

By my math, if that were a single spherical water droplet, it would be almost 3.7 miles in diameter.

If you have trouble visualizing this (as I do), the height of the Empire State Building is 0.2 miles. So imagine a sphere of water 20 times taller than the Empire State Building falling on New York.

Of course, the area and rate it falls on is crucial, but as a way to think about the scale of it I found this useful.

Edit: just saw this was done nicely by the article dreamcompiler linked to!

> Or instead of iterating 5 times, you take your time and do it right on the 2nd attempt, figuring it out in 1/3 of the time. Hurrying only leads to mistakes.

In an abstract sense this is true, but there are some fields were you do just have to do it again, and again, and again. I know an exceptionally smart biochemist who routinely has 16 hour days. There's no substitute.

In my own field, someone who would later go on to win a Nobel for the work, was working on something that simply required a huge amount of time and iteration to get right. This is often the case.

This is not true in all fields, of course. I just want to caution against extrapolating from experience in one field to all PhDs, which is the sense I get from a lot of comments in this thread.

> Americans tend to look down on anyone who has a doctorate from anywhere in Europe that isn't Oxford or Cambridge.

Look, this just isn't true. I've heard it repeated a lot online, but I've never encountered it myself.

For context, I have a UK PhD, not from Oxford or Cambridge, and I got hired as a postdoc in a top-10 school in the US doing really exciting research.

There are differences between PhDs in US and the UK and Europe, but the differences are complex... there's no clear answer that one is better over the other.

It's a little unfortunate, because I've known Americans who were put off a UK-based PhD because they think professors look down on them, but I've seen little evidence to back it up. My colleagues come from all over the world, and they're all super smart, and everyone's treated equally and with respect. When it comes down to it, the quality of your research, and your ability to work hard, is far more important than what country or institution you're from.

(There are also a lot of anecdotes out there... in this thread, someone who completed early (congrats btw!), someone else with 20+ papers... you can be guaranteed there are people reading this thread who might be discouraged reading this. The one unifying factor with PhDs is that personal experience is highly variable, and artificial targets (finish in x years with y papers etc.) do not correlate with later success or the value of your research. So for anyone still slogging through who's reading this, good luck!)

Sadly looks like there's a turf war going on. So dumb.

[1] "HMRC rejects Gov.uk Verify", http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450412927/HMRC-rejects-Go... [2] http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450301278/Revealed-The-ba...

> Arrival is arguably science fantasy since it's central conceit isn't very sciencey

Read the original short story: the actual premise is actually very science-y, and completely "true sci-fi." Don't want to spoil it here though.

> though everything _except_ that is very hard sci fi.

Yeah, personally I think sci-fi (rather than sci-fantasy) is allowed to break a single physical law and still be considered sci-fi, as long as it's done consistently and the consequences properly explored.

It's the only explanation.

While true, the same math holds for 22 nm^2 (484) to 14 nm^2 (196).

Real world gains will never be as high as the math suggests, as you get into leakage currents etc.

> They look really goofy. They should have gone with a standard design like Wayfarers

I'm not sure about that... if you have a technology that won't quite fit in a 'standard' design, but you try and force it anyway, it'll look bad regardless. Better to embrace the goofiness and make something a little fun instead.

Swift has a clear policy on this, but basically: it's worth breaking things early on rather than freeze in bad design decisions. They provide a code migrator to help with this pain.

However, this was only in the early releases. The plan is to stop breaking changes soon and freeze the ABI. They're a little behind schedule for this, but it should happen soon.

I'm in physics/chemistry/materials fields. I've been around several 'world-class' institutions in the UK and USA, and had mixed experiences -- far more mixed than you'd think looking at simple rankings. I wouldn't like to draw any hard conclusions though, because I only have anecdotes, but perhaps others can comment.

> Now, it is seen as an extension of high school; the onus is on the college to mold all comers into more educated and productive citizens, even if that means re-teaching the basics.

This seems to be the case with grad programs now too: doing the teaching that undergrad should have already done. Turtles all the way down.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. If we shut down the conversation about literature when it starts, then yes we'll never discuss it ;)

I'm always pleased to see posts on literature show up on the HN[0], but often disappointed to see so few comments. But enough people are up-voting them that they do regularly appear on the front page, so there's clearly enough interest around here.

[0] e.g. see https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nybooks.com and https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lrb.co.uk

It would be really nice if you could blacklist websites from using extensions in Safari, e.g. banking websites.

There are lots of useful extensions out there that would be nice to use, but I'm concerned if they became compromised (which happens regularly[1]) they might hijack my data.

Safari has a great feature that stops extensions from being able to read or transmit anything from websites you visit, which is great, but limits the effectiveness of a lot of ad blockers.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14888010 (just 2 days ago!)

Yeah, that's really sad. If Apple wants to get back into this, they'd be welcomed with open arms.

If Grapher ever gets abandoned, I really hope they open source it. An update for the icons to be retina-ready, and moving the backend to Metal, and maybe easier integration into Keynote/Pages, would be all it needs to make a kiss-ass product. It'd be so far beyond anything anywhere else. Can you imagine how nice it would be for students to easily be able to embed/edit mathematical graphs into their documents?

It's crazy, there's a whole generation of people who grew up with graphing calculators, and yet it's such an ordeal to do something similar in Pages or Numbers right now.

LiFX let you set the color right? So by definition they're going to be RGB (have three colored LEDs inside). Generally, LEDs that are single color are more likely to be phosphor (blue LED inside with a phosphor that converts to yellow).