UnfalseDesign

Another way Google Photos is transparent is the app will actually let you know that many of the photos on your phone have been backed up to Photos. The app will ask if you would like those backed up photos to be removed from your phone. (And it'll ask you every time since it doesn't assume that if you said "yes" once then you mean "yes" every time.) So, there's no question about where your photos went when you can't find them.

I got similar results. I took some sample code from the Apple SpriteKit documentation:

  CGFloat distance = sqrtf((clickPoint.x-charPos.x)*(clickPoint.x-charPos.x)+
                             (clickPoint.y-charPos.y)*(clickPoint.y-charPos.y));

And got this in Swift:

  var distance:CGFloat  = sqrtf((*((clickPoint.y-charPos.y)*()

Most of the code I put in converted to Swift correctly (though it wasn't efficient Swift code) but the above line was just plain wrong. So, it still seems a little buggy but it is a good idea. Like you pointed out, it is only useful for Objective-C to Swift since the Foundation framework is not available in Android.

I love the concept. There still seems to be some room for improvement, though. When searching for "Tom Merritt", it only shows podcasts that "mention Tom Merritt" as opposed to podcasts he's been in or hosted. I plan on checking back in a couple months to see how it has come along. Love the idea, though!

Agreed. Though the article's title lists Windows XP as the city's major problem, it appears to be the least of its worries. The major bank I work for is just now standardizing everyone up to Windows 7. We've done the majority of our work in Office 2003. Though it is frustrating at times, it has not dragged us into bankruptcy. It sounds like upgrading to a modern operating system should be near the bottom of the list of things Detroit needs to do at the moment.

If the Nexus devices were available for pre-order today, I would be inclined to agree with you. However, since they aren't available for pre-order until the 17th, the day after the Apple announcement, then I doubt Apple is worried. Apple knows full well that they will dominate the new tomorrow.

If the new Nexus devices were available for pre-order today: maybe. Since the Nexus devices are not available for pre-order until the day after the iPad announcement: unlikely.

As much as a portion of my mind wants to think this leak was a well timed attempt to draw tablet news in their direction mere hours after Google released information about theirs, I honestly believe it was just a mistake. Apple gains nothing by releasing this information a mere 24 hours before their big announcement. This is just a mistimed button click.

One of the few things I like about the Amazon app store is their feature called "Test Drive" which allows a user to test an app before purchasing it. One can not only test it on their device but also test it inside a web browser.

I see the echos of that enthusiasm in my daughters when they build in their Minecraft worlds. Notch's sense of wonder and joy of creating has been spread to millions.

I have 3 daughters, all grade-school age, and they play Minecraft more than I do. We talk about it over dinner and watch YouTube videos about how to build things. I've also seen them make quick friends by talking about it. My daughters have even come to know some server terminology (mostly from hearing me say it while getting their games to work).

It is also a thrill for me, as a parent, to be able to see their young imaginations manifest in a 3D space which I can explore and interact with.

Full text of post until the site becomes less overloaded:

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I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it’s changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It’s certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting.

A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect person to take over leading it, and I wanted to try to do new things. At first, I failed by trying to make something big again, but since I decided to just stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges, I’ve had so much fun with work. I wasn’t exactly sure how I fit into Mojang where people did actual work, but since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed.

I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn’t understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.

As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.

Considering the public image of me already is a bit skewed, I don’t expect to get away from negative comments by doing this, but at least now I won’t feel a responsibility to read them.

I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that. I’m also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I’m not. I’m a person, and I’m right there struggling with you.

I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can’t be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it’s belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.

It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.

Same here. I'm a web developer in the US and I make $17 an hour... and that's at a major, international corporation. I think you and I are being shorted.

I agree. If Scalzi is saying that the cost of production should not alter the price of the product, then I would ask him why paperback and mass market prints of books are less than hardback books in regards to the price. According to his argument, paperback books and hardcover books should be set at the same price regardless of what it takes to produce them.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it appears as if you have forgotten to include any contact information on this post.

For me, it depends on the type of book. I find I can bare reading a technical book online. However, I have trouble reading it for very long, I find myself skipping prose to get to the meat of the content, and I find a quick glance at my email or F5 on my favorite news site is just a small click away. Still, I personally find reading technical books easier on the computer while reading a novel or biography far better with a cup of coffee, an easy chair, and an e-reader.

In regards to the book's online version, I like how it has code examples that one can edit and run inline among the book's text. I often find myself, while reading a book on a particular language, opening up a new project in an IDE or a REPL in order to fiddle around with what the book it trying to teach. This makes it much more fluid.

It was a pleasant surprise. It is a nice concept I have not previously seen done. (I'm sure someone can come up with examples of where it has previously been done before but this is the first I personally have seen it.)

You definitely don't need network access. I use Google Authenticator on my Wifi only tablet. You need an internet connection to sync it to Google's key but not after that. And, yes, when the tablet's clock is off by a few minutes, the code doesn't work.

Even if you exclude the first year of his life, that wouldn't change the "~11 a day" estimate by much. It might up it to "~12" a day.

Good point. I guess, on a very ground level view, all game concepts have more or less been around for years. It would be an interesting study of why this one went so big when so many others didn't.

Also, I was thinking of more of a blatant rip off. I'd imagine those rip offs that are already out there are going to see a spike in downloads in the next couple days when people go to find this game and it isn't there.

This is a great opportunity for someone to make a (good) clone of this game and clean up!

I understand that he is probably wanting to get away from all the press coverage but I'm pretty sure this is not the right way to go about it. This might actually have the opposite effect. I had no intention of downloading it but knowing it is about to be removed, I'm going to download it.

Decoupling an app from the OS to update it faster is the reason they pulled the YouTube app from being shipped with iOS.

If that were the case, wouldn't they also not ship it with Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Calendar, etc.

Also, in most cases, is it the actual programming language we hate or is it the code we've seen written by people who had no concept of the language that we hate?

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws." -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Switch out "bad news" with "angry news."

eBay has been slowly moving away from being an auction house (the internet's garage sale) for years now. They have been moving towards becoming the "storefront" for people selling things without needing an actual physical store. Hence the attention to "Buy It Now" and "Add to Cart" over "Bid".

Given that this is a simulation, it would meant that it is based on an actual reality with physics that either match or are limited below our own. Given the technology it would take to simulate life, the Designers would have to live in a reality where they have harnessed some form of energy. The question is how much energy would it take to simulate nearly seven billion people? Even if you didn't have to process those that were sleeping, that's still a lot of energy being consumed by the simulation. Either the Designers are using massive amounts of energy to run the simulation or they have a completely different set of physics and are running a simulation to test alternative physics.

True. In order to know something is not running correctly, you would need a clear concept of what it would look like if it were running correctly. (The old argument that if you were raised in a cave in total darkness, you can't know it is dark unless you know what light is.) In order to notice a bug, we would need to be outside the simulation.

Where is the Universe's bug tracker. I have a few bugs I would like to report.

How much patience did people have back in the 90s when broadband and computers were slower? (Hell, it sometimes took 30 minutes just to dial into AOL without getting a busy signal.) Now that computers and broadband are faster, do you think people have just as much patience as before or less?

I'd imagine that, until broadband becomes truly instant, you will have a need to ensure users that the page is still loading. A user's patience will never grow. It will only shrink. The least we can do is buy ourselves precious seconds by using a progress bar. It is the difference between "Your call is important to us, please hold" and "You are now 5th in line to be answered. Please hold." The illusion of progress goes a long way in fooling the user's brain into having just a smidge more patience.