astrocat

Certainly - Kodak has been making some big, bold moves in an attempt to stay alive. They're not dying quietly, that's for sure.

But I will say that I doubt this will impact iPhone owners at all; Kodak would have to demonstrate some truly amazing tech - be it lenses, sensors, or image processing - that can blow iPhones out of the water. And I just don't see that happening. They're touting... filters. Ok, maybe be charitable and talk about the editing experience with access to raw camera data - histograms! - but iPhones just got that too. So it's parity, at best.

What DOES put pressure on the iPhone is the new Pixel that came out of nowhere with a ridiculously good camera. Everybody (ok, "I") thought Apple's camera and picture quality was one of their biggest competitive advantages, but clearly, great photo quality is more commodity now.

<armchair> There's a missed opportunity here... this is not a smartphone, because as a phone, it will suck. It's a smartcamera, because as a point-and-shoot running Android with a cellular data connection, it will probably be quite cool. As mentioned already, Nokia tried the "photography first" smartphonecamera - it didn't fly. Because, honestly, iPhones are already top of the line smartphonecameras. The cameras are ridiculously good, all things considered. Kodak should realize there's no point in attempting to get people to trade in their iPhone for one of these - they should focus on making this the other accessory you want to have in addition to your iPhone. Like a Kindle. You CAN read stuff on your phone, but there's a better experience to be had. You CAN take pictures and video on your phone but... there's a better experience to be had? Maybe. I'm not entirely convinced the same kind of value can be added at a price that's worth paying before just up and getting a DSLR. But, that's my take on this whole thing. </armchair>

another review[1] noted average to mediocre battery performance, so I wouldn't consider this meaningful. Google itself isn't particularly touting the battery life as anything other than on-par with other flagships so I don't think there's really anything to see here.

otoh, Google Assistant seems to show well though, which is neat.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel-pho...

You posture that an effective policy to put downward pressure on fertility is to deny access to education. A policy whose effects specifically target individuals who didn't make the decisions you want to disincentivize. I think you might want to re-think your policy positions :) In general, I don't think inhibiting access to quality education is ever an appropriate response to any situation.

The Digital Sabbath. Also, while we're reinventing ancient traditions for the modern age, how about a Digital Salat - where you unplug and meditate for a few minutes 5 times a day.

> it's the result of leaving nonfiction communication to the lowest-common-denominator of market forces.

but seriously, what's the alternative? How do you avoid market forces? What process does a culture need to undergo to pull it's journalism away from market forces and enshrine it so that it is no longer a commodity afflicted by the market's weaknesses?

Is the BBC one such isolated place where the culture of the UK that supports it simply expects it to always have a higher standard, market demands be damned? How did it get there? Or more cynically, how much longer can it last?

Is incessant fear-mongering manipulation the inevitable dystopian end of a society that is always connected to channels of mass communication? This is the result of the race to the bottom for eyeballs and attention - the appeal to fear. Does this ever resolve?

We spend so much time lamenting the demise of journalism, the sensationalization of media, the fear-mongering, etc... But it's not like distinct "bad choices" led to this state - it's the simple consequence of TPTB (well, anyone, really) having the ability to engage wider and wider audiences (and ultimately everybody) in increasingly real-time creating such fierce competition for attention that we must eventually use our most powerful emotional appeals for even the most trivial messages.

I mean, look at me, being all fatalistic - I'm guilty too. But I'm legitimately curious where we go from here, or perhaps more accurately, where do people think the bottom really is, and what will happen when we get there?

It's unclear the intent of the author, but for this community it can be taken as a reminder that scandal is often ephemeral - stirring up the press and public but making no lasting change. The tragedy of a Victorian seamstress, the San Bernardino iPhone, Sandy Hook... To effect change requires a concerted, persistent, depressingly long effort to see it through, not just shouting for a bit.

I forget where I read it recently, but there was a piece about how some great strides forward were made not overnight, even though they may have seemed that way (I think the context may have been civil rights), but through decades of constant, vigilant advocacy and activism.

I'd never heard of one-for-one, but it's such a brilliant idea! Thanks for sharing

Very rarely to things have upside with no downside. "Geeks" are clearly aware of both the upside of autonomous vehicles, and the downsides presented by advanced, always-connected tech and the monitoring that comes with it. Thus, the advocacy for privacy, strong encryption, no backdoors, and the fight against government surveillance is the responsible approach to advocating for a bright, advanced future where tech serves us, rather than consumes us.

> For this reason, caffeine isn’t technically a stimulant on its own... but a stimulant enabler: a substance that lets our natural stimulants run wild.

This is the bit I find fascinating and perhaps explains why some people are so sensitive to caffeine and others don't experience discernable effects. There are probably underlying physiological (and/or psychological) differences in individuals self-stimulant production, and caffeine magnifies those effects.

Armchair scientist conjecture: I'd suspect that people who are considered "Type-A" are more strongly affected by caffeine as it enhances their natural, self-stimulating mechanisms (whatever those are).

Matt Levine is always an immense pleasure to read.

I know the BMW shifters you're talking about, but there is one significant difference: the mechanism for entering Park is not like the rest of the gear selection options (Drive, Neutral, Reverse). It's a button on the top of the shifter. As such, when you want to put the car in park, you push a button, you don't move the shifter.

I'm not saying this is a great shifter design overall, but it DOES mean that you quickly learn a completely different routine for putting the car in park. Basically: "If I want the car to be moving, then move the shifter. If I want the car to stop moving, push the button."

>In any even remotely sane universe... Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War.

While I generally agree with the author's sentiment, I think part of the difference with why Tesla is getting so much flak instead of praise is because the pioneers of yore were astronauts, scientists and soldiers who took risks they understood, and did it willingly.

But with Tesla, the intrepid pioneers of autonomous driving are everyday people who are engaging in behavior that is probably more risky than they realize, and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that.

At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development.

It's strawmen all the way down...

> If all 1000 people were involved in a shootout and fired on the police first...

These are quite specifically NOT the kinds of incidents at issue.

> there are contexts where your right to privacy should be suspended too.

Again, we're not talking about these specific contexts where evidence and investigation are thorough. We're talking about exposing biases when evidence and due process are either minimal or nonexistent.

> And if there were 10,000 privacy violations nationwide and all of them were well-documented emergency circumstances, I'd hesitate to even call it a problem.

Yes, of course. This is clearly not a problem because of "well-documented emergency circumstances." The original article is about revealing trends from circumstances that are very poorly documented, and rarely or selectively reported.

This sentiment is quite common: "I don't care if 'bad people' die. Fairly or unfairly, doesn't matter - they're bad people."

I would equate this to "I don't care about privacy because I have nothing to hide. Only bad people have things to hide, and if their privacy is taken away, so what, they're bad people."

If you can understand why privacy is a 'Good Thing', or better, a Human Right, then you should be able to comprehend why extrajudicial killings are a Bad Thing, or better, a violation of Human Rights.

When Apple dropped the optical drive, the internet was eating everything. The internet is a massive, global infrastructure project that was clearly not going to slow down. People were already downloading software, movies and music, and loved the ease of that experience. The writing was on the wall, they just jumped earlier.

So what's the up and coming thing that's just about to take over audio transmission, the "internet" that ate physical disk distribution? Is it Bluetooth?

> Bluetooth audio works perfectly fine, and it's how I play music on my headphones...

sample size of one. I can match that. I never use bluetooth and actively avoid it due to it's poor quality, connection fragility, and the time it takes to set up (repeatedly). Basically, the UX of bluetooth is terrible. The UX of a simple, universal, cheap, dependable, quick, robust and high fidelity cable and connector is great.

Whatever tech that will eventually replace the 3.5mm jack isn't here yet.

Well hey, I guess I'm not crazy after all. :)

the analogy is baloney. floppy drives didn't get removed from hardware just because they were "old" or "made the computer fat," ... floppy drives were removed from computers because their entire raison d'etre was becoming more rare - the Floppy Disk. It was actively being replaced by CDs because it wasn't sufficient as a storage medium any more.

So for the analogy to make sense, 3.5mm plugs would have to be dying, actively and ubiquitously being replaced by ... whatever. Lightning? USB-C? But they're not. The 3.5mm jack and headphones in particular are probably more common now than ever before.

I personally would love to see the headphone jack become more useful in lots of different ways. Square managed to make a CC reader that plugged into the 3.5mm jack. Impressive, using it as a data port for simple data. Can we do more of that? What if a 3.5mm cable was a way for your phone to connect to various IoT devices to pass the basic setup data like your wifi SSID and password instead of this goofy process of broadcasting it's own wifi network that you have to connect to. Any app can push signals out the headphone port, and it works the same across iOS and Android. Maybe I'm an idiot and that'd never work but the point is: 3.5mm isn't dead. It's very much alive and kicking.

I know it can be frustrating, it's happened to me too, but the reality is that email validation generally isn't for you. It's for the 99% of other people who would greatly appreciate the heads up that they've typed "something@yahoocom" or "Boys@MenFan1@whatever.com" and it's probably not what they meant to type.

Now we can talk about HOW validation is implemented, and I think it would be completely fair to raise a warning: "Hey, did you mean to enter this?" instead of "sorry, nope." when non-trivial addresses are encountered.

I live in Austin and have to agree that the headlines made by the Austin Police Department are just as depressing as anywhere else. Interestingly though, I've heard (but can't say I know for fact) that APD actually pays well, is highly competitive to get in to, and recruits nationally. If accurate, it makes it all the more unfortunate that they can't seem to be an exemplary law enforcement institution.

I think what is most disheartening is how divergent the culture of the law enforcement community and the culture of the communities they serve* have become increasingly divergent. From my own perspective, it appears that law enforcement nationally is predominantly white and conservative, while the US population is growing more diverse and culturally more liberal. I believe this divide is really what exacerbates the tensions with police and communities we're seeing a lot of right now. They're fundamentally different cultures the power relationship between the two makes conditions ripe for conflict (its not inherent, just more likely). Perhaps that's why Austin, the "liberal" outpost of Texas sees this "surprising" degree of police conflict - the cultural chasm between the law enforcers and the citizens.

* Also depressing, when it seems more like law enforcement is terrorizing the communities within their jurisdiction rather than serving them.

I can't be the only one who has made a habit of casually referring to them as "space computers." Whenever my wife asks some easily google-able question I reply "well just ask you pocket space computer."

I want to hang on to the sense of awe and amazement at the reality of having a powerful computer and all of the internet at our disposal at all times.

It seems like we could achieve the economic goals mentioned in the article and avoid the pitfalls of plastic in the environment by simply getting over our dislike of waste incineration. Modern incinerators are quite wonderful things, but need careful management of a couple waste byproducts. I was pleasantly surprised at the comprehensiveness of the wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration

Absolutely - it is certainly a HUGE undertaking. Though the value to the society/community/voters would be equally enormous it's unlikely we'll ever find the resources to have such a thing executed in a thorough, responsible (unbiased) manner. I suppose this is the part where I motivate myself to design and build it because nobody else will...

Sidenote - high-five for the stuff going on at 18F :)

> The problem with basic income is that people need purpose, not charity.

This is based entirely on the assumption that work=purpose, which I think is bogus.

> Look at the success of programs in Africa that give people the ability to make a living...

For many, perhaps most of the poor, simply BEING poor inhibits them from being able to make a decent living. Jobs may not be available, the means to get to a job reliably may not be available, the physical/mental health to sustain a job may not be present and the resources to be treated and rehabilitated are obviously not there.

In effect, the hypothesis is that in a highly developed economy, handing out cash might be the equivalent of "teach to fish" for, say, rural Africa. And even then, at least one study showed that basic income guarantee did amazing things for an african village, increasing education and entrepreneurship (sorry - don't have the link handy, maybe someone else can point to it).

> suffer mostly from hopelessness

On a final note, be careful here... if I have cancer, and I can't do anything, do I suffer mostly from hopelessness or do I suffer from cancer? Hopelessness is a symptom of people suffering from poverty.

on your last point, I've wondered if it would be within the scope of 18F or the US Digital Service to create a local.gov site/platform that is a repository for all local government information and vector for engagement. Figuring out who all the locally elected officials are and what they are supposed to do is nearly an impossible task.

This entire debate over the quality of school lunch is myopic. School lunch food isn't the problem, American food culture is the Problem. I'd bet, (I have no data for this - I'm just a windbag of opinions) that in most communities (countries --> neighborhoods, whatever scope you want), school lunches will generally reflect the status quo of food quality in the community. Because if they didn't, parents would flip out.

Status quo meals in Norway and France are pretty decent, I suspect. I've spent some time living in France and that certainly seemed to be the case. Status quo meals in the US? Terrible. The average American eats poorly - incredibly poorly - and it shows; in our health, waistlines, and, of course, in our school lunches.

So the real challenge is to move the needle on American food culture. School lunches can and should be one vector for effecting that change, but we need to recognize and tackle the bigger picture. As others have mentioned, proper regulations on marketing to children is a must.

"Think of H2Flow as an app for your teeth. The more Flow you take in, the more Sparkle Points you get! Get enough Sparkle Points and you're on your way to your first Aqua Badge..."

(Parks and Rec)

Since the topic has also been making the rounds on HN, this was, as I recall, one of the issues raised with Gravity Payments and their $70K base salary.

>And sometimes being personally disrespectful yields better results. Which is, after all, what one wants out of a software project

This is just as absurd as saying "And sometimes torture yields good information. Which is, after all, what one wants out of interrogation."

Under no circumstances should we conflate being critical with being disrespectful or verbally abusive. Good criticism can always be given in a respectful manner.