canistr

It's odd that you cite Gemini on the S24 as the straw that broke the camel's back when Bixby (and its dedicated button) has been around since 2017.

Messenger and Marketplace are insanely successful. You have to be willfully blind to not see it.

Twitter and Youtube, sure.

But the blast radius of a Facebook post doesn't have the same reach given the majority of posts go to your explicit network of connections. Unless you're specifically referring to Facebook Groups? But then are we certain it's different from Reddit or other forums?

The author's comparison of Tree/Graph approach doesn't flow logically from the discussion about ad-hoc documentation. Searching Slack for answers has become more valuable to me because of this ad-hoc nature.

StackOverflow is arguably more ad-hoc than a pure Wiki approach. I can already add links inside Google Docs. So the graph isn't the solution that solves this.

Using Pidgin with OTR was the way to go for private chats. shrug

It's been replaced by whatever genre you would describe Black Mirror as. A reflection of the modern dystopia we live in within the context of the current year.

As a Torontonian, the problem with it has always been with both the data sovereignty and overall control by a non-Canadian entity. The problem of technology, foreign control, and what we give up is especially acute when someone like Jim Balsillie points it out in the wake of technological blowups like RIM and Nortel.

I especially didn't like the fact that the Sidewalk Labs employees were primarily New York-based with very little understanding or familiarity with the nuances of our city/province/country. Why are you remotely experimenting with our city instead of sending your teams here to develop it? Wouldn't familiarity with the surrounding neighbourhoods be an important factor in how you make a deep impact into the local environment?

Doctoroff managed to not address any of Balsillie's primary concerns. And I imagine most Americans are wilfully blind of the local issues when they come here. (Just look at how ownership of sports teams like the Montreal Expos turned out).

This still largely ignores the Data Sovereignty issue for non-US citizens. The US government still maintains control and oversight of US companies that rule the non-China markets. Data flow still runs through US data centres or even through US companies.

This is a huge con for citizens of non-US countries that simply don't want traffic and rules exported by the USG. Since, as non-US citizens, we're not subject to any of the "protections" afforded to a "US Person".

"In order to best serve our retail merchants and learn about React Native in a physical retail setting, we decided to build out the new POS natively for iOS and use React Native for Android."

Unbelievable, really. The previous paragraph literally mentions the importance of performance.

facepalm

If I'm China, wouldn't I be concerned if the opposite were true? That my military capabilities didn't allow me the ability to at least defend my continent/sphere of influence from my greatest enemy?

It's one thing to go on the offensive to attack another country like the US at their home, but it's another to have the capabilities to defend areas of interest that are relatively close to home.

You know what else the city could do to clear cars along a major transit corridor?

Stop allowing taxis to park on Richmond just outside the Hilton hotel at University.

Those taxis & cars parked at Richmond & University are singlehandedly responsible for the traffic along Richmond coming off the DVP. It blocks the left-hand turning traffic leaving effectively only a single lane crossing University.

The part that gets me the most about killing Inbox and forcing users to go back to Gmail is the accumulation of Pinned emails.

I was happy to oblige to using pins when I transitioned from Gmail -> Inbox. Stars were replaced with pins but there is no direct mapping. But now that Inbox is dead, the years of pinned emails are effectively useless when they should've been starred in Gmail. It's a frustrating experience for users especially when this is not the first time for Google.

This is why as an Android Developer, I'm in the majority community opinion believing that Dart/Flutter/Fuschia shouldn't be trusted. These products/dev tools are going to be in perpetual beta and not worth taking the risk of going to prod with.

What you have to understand is that Facebook is effectively the defacto global identity system. Russian bots and astroturfing aside, it's still the most widely used and deployed identity verification service around that is borderless and not government controlled.

Yes, they don't have penetration in every country in the world (i.e. in China). But they effectively own identity services in the Western world. For blockchains, one of the key gaps in adoption is validating and verifying real users.

If I'm one of the blockchain startups doing identity verification such as Civic or Status, I'd be very worried right now that the 500 pound gorilla is getting into the game.

Well, there are a few issues with this.

Firstly, many Waterloo STEM students already do this based on the school's curriculum of interweaving work and study terms. Fortunately and unfortunately, these are exactly the students being lured away into the US.

Secondly the Ontario Government (i.e. Wynne Government and potentially NDPs), has lowered tuition costs for families making under 160k by 30% with the intention of further lowering the costs to (eventually) free in the future. In other words, they fully intend to increase government debt to fund tuition costs for all Ontario students (except if you're middle class and higher). But guess what? Will this really have an impact on Waterloo STEM grads? Unlikely. Increasing payback doesn't affect the students who CAN afford it.

I can also attest to CV being a great OMSCS class. To me they are by far the best lectures in the program in terms of breadth and depth. They're the most similar to in-class instruction of a university unlike every other class in the program.

As for Isbell+Littman... while their lectures may be more jovial, I wouldn't say they were as effective in learning. I hated the videos tbh. For ML, I found my learning consisted of watching other available videos on the web. Including institutions like CMU, UW, Stanford, and YouTube.

It's worth pointing out that BECAUSE Dropbox recently announced their plans to IPO, all media coverage is now viewed in light of what's best to prop up their pricing.

No surprise that they are including names like Google, Microsoft, and SAP to put a more positive spin on everything.

This is really too bad. I loved Swype and used it since it was in beta. It was always (and still is) better than every other keyboard and gesture-keyboard for me. I tried switching to GBoard for a while because I felt it was inevitable that Swype would eventually be discontinued due to lack of updates. But even after several months of usage, Swype was still significantly more accurate, fast, and responsive than GBoard.

RIP Swype.

Well for one, cryptocurrencies (at their current prices) can be divided much greater than simply "1 share". I'm saying that the price that Robinhood sets is dependent on orderbook price which they control.

Example: you buy $20 USD worth of BTC on Robinhood. They give you 0.001750 BTC.

But on other exchanges, you would have received 0.001812 BTC instead. The differing price of BTC between exchanges gives them their "commission/fee".

The lack of transparency in pricing gives them the advantage in exchange for retail consumer confusion over "zero fees".

So who is responsible for Robinhood's orderbook? Are they partnering with an existing exchange to fulfill market/limit orders? Are they simply paying for the trading fees on behalf of users?

If Robinhood isn't posting their orderbook, why would anyone trust that there are no fees or commissions when they could bake their costs directly into the price? There's no market regulation (a la Reg NMS) for cryptocurrencies, so who's to say that the user isn't getting screwed on price and allowing Robinhood to take their cut?

But if they are partnering with an exchange, why pick one over the other? Who will pay for the withdrawal/transaction fees?

It's never really about the devs. It's about creating buy-in from management to support the work that needs to be done. You'll be hard-pressed to find leadership that is generally willing to re-architect/re-engineer apps from scratch without significant pressure from somewhere else in the org other than engineering.

Technical debt is always the last concern in the product. But for once, it's manifesting itself as a real user-facing problem which was acknowledged in the last SNAP earnings call for the Android app.

Between the introduction of Instant Run and Genymotion going to a paid business model, I'd say the Emulator has improved exponentially. I tend to alternate between using the Emulator and using a device depending on what I'm working on.

More like they changed it "back" to CSE. :)

It's probably safer to assume CSE/CSIS would use open-source tools than stuff from MSFT/ORCL.

Good time to remind people about the previously false accusations from the Yankees on the Blue Jays sign stealing using a "Man in White" sitting the outfield with binoculars.

The interesting part here is that the Yankees alleged the "Man in White" was positioned right above the pitcher's head in the outfield seats so that the batter did not have to move his head in order to see the signal.

I can't imagine the logistics and speed required to relay a signal from the outfield -> dugout -> batter in a reasonable amount of time to be able to hit.

http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/6837424/baseball-tor...

I find the convergence typically by design on the part of the Designers, PMs, and decision-makers up top as opposed to their actually being a need for convergence. I often attribute this to a strong lack of diversity of teams whereby there are almost zero Android users on the design/product team leading to a unified look.

It can also be attributed to laziness on the part of the PM and/or designer. Or in general, clients opting for cheaper solutions when hiring an agency to build apps for them.

I say all this to point out that, Android users often get the short end of the stick when it comes to app design. Often there is a strong lack of consideration on what is a native Android app feel. No consideration for the use of back-buttons, menus and UI elements using bottom navigations or custom ones instead of native Material design... Generally convergence is made for all kinds of reasons that ultimately leave Android users alienated.

I used it a bunch of times and having it on campus was pretty great. It was way safer than having the packages left randomly at the front of your residence. So as far as a "solved problem" is concerned, this definitely wasn't solved in any shape or form at Waterloo until BufferBox arrived.

I can echo a similar scenario as above. While plugging in my phone to Android Auto is easy, there is still the time required to allow your phone to transition from WiFi to LTE, back-up-camera enabled when backing out of your garage, and opening up the Android Auto menu (but first I have to tap home and go into it).

Overall, in a driving commute of about 25 minutes I have to spend the first 2-4 minutes effectively waiting to configure Android Auto and for it to kick in with the proper signal and menus.

It's a hassle for everyday commuting when the purpose of AA is to simplify a lot of the work. The menu systems are also a bit of a pain to navigate for podcasts. So I end up organizing my music/podcasts before I get in the car.

It's a cute analogy perpetuated by GenX VCs and crypto-wonks who don't see a down-side in making bold, wild claims. It's one of the many problems today in which there is no down-side risk on making extremely early predictions. No one will call you out on being wrong. I view it similar to people who have been calling for another tech bubble and the subsequent market crash even though we're still very much in the midst of consistent All-Time Highs.

I liked this guide on reversing Android. https://www.evilsocket.net/2017/04/27/Android-Applications-R...

CharlesProxy is a must-have whether you're a dev or reverse-engineering.

JADX is the best for reversing Android because it produces readable Android code which is fantastic for current Android developers who expect things to be organized like Android Studio.

I mostly agree. Tory's strategy seems to be optics first, policy second. Even if it means going against his more conservative principles. It doesn't really factor in the people who live in neighbourhoods/areas affected by poor Airbnb tenants/renters.