joshuapants

Windows Phone has a talented team of designers, an innovative and easy to use UI, and backing from a major corporation with practically unlimited funds. It also has a tiny sliver of market share. Jolla has great designers, compatibility with Android apps, and killer hardware. Their marketshare is even smaller. Realistically, right now Android and iOS have all the mindshare and there is not a chance in hell that a me-too mobile OS is going to get any meaningful traction.

Let's be honest, even if they did have a talented team of designers nobody would use this.

The barrier to entry may be lower if you consider a user who has never used either software and is trying to make a decision. But if you have a user who has used Excel for the past 2 decades and is comfortable with it, low barrier to entry is still higher than just "go with what I know."

> Dan Ariely (behavioural economics)

I enjoyed Predictably Irrational, so I would love to hear some recommended reading from him

.NET Native [1] promises to speed up C# code so that it is comparable to C++. Universal applications stand to benefit as the page says, and I assume that traditional .NET desktop apps can take advantage of it as well.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dotnetnative.aspx?f...

I don't have Flash installed so it can't be that. Hm, maybe a browser issue.

I think this is a pretty decent redesign. It does look like it sacrifices a bit of information-density, however. The assumption seems to be "Reddit-as-imageboard," even though a number of subreddits are much more text-oriented where the large thumbnails serve no purpose other than to show fewer posts at a time.

Additionally, I don't know if the workflow he presented is entirely realistic. When I use HN, for example, I scan the front page, opening the discussions I find interesting in new tabs and then just moving down the list. I would use Reddit in much the same way. I'm probably not typical, but I'm probably not part of a tiny minority either.

Makes sense. That said, will they not admit anyone who has a legitimate reason for prescription stimulants?

> Based on my limited experience I would say it's usually a pretty bad sign if there's not enough work for the developers...

This is absolutely true. It either means resources are being inefficiently allocated or there's not enough business to justify so many salaries.

I agree. Money is my motivation, but not in and of itself. I am motivated to acquire money because it is necessary for me to live, enjoy myself, and also create more achievements that are personally gratifying but also ideally feed back into the cycle.

> All we really have to do is fire judges (and those that appoint them) who do not uphold the constitution

The biggest problem with doing something like this is coming to an agreement on exactly what the constitution allows and prohibits (and somehow also get everyone to agree that the constitution should be followed, because there are people all over the political spectrum who don't think that).

> Are you suggesting humans will damage the planet that much?

Yes. Now that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, I would imagine that total human annihilation will happen sooner rather than later. The only way to guarantee survival of the species is to take to the stars and spread out.

No ads on Netflix unless you count the header on the page giving you a notification that new content is available, the carousel that rotates through new/interesting content, or the suggestion of other things you might be interested in after finishing a movie/series while the credits roll. No external ads, no commercials while you watch, just unintrusive elements that serve to help both the user and Netflix.

> In the cases that I can't escape ads by paying, I tend to move away from the content with ads.

This is why I don't listen to the radio or watch "normal" TV anymore. I purchase music, subscribe to streaming services, and use Netflix.

> It's just that the ads are not wedged in between the middle of the book to interrupt the reading experience.

Absolutely, the annoyance-factor of some types of advertisement are within acceptable bounds. It also helps that those ads may very well be for things you're actually interested in; if you liked the book you just read, knowing what other books are available from the same author at the end actually helps you. This is in stark contrast to, for example, the ads at the end of articles on some pages that masquerade as other articles, but just take you to another page filled with more ads for things you have no interest in.

> Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us

At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that point, it will make plenty of sense.

> sending a single tourist to the moon...

All this focus on tourists seems like a strawman. Yes, there are people who would probably want to go to the Moon or Mars for a space-cation. No, that is not a primary reason for the existence of space programs.

Manned Moon and hypothetical manned Mars missions are not the endgame. They're stepping stones that hopefully lead to our escape from the solar system.

Well, we have lots of data on zero gravity from various astronauts in space who have been up for long periods of time. In zero g, muscles atrophy and bones get less dense. The longest moon mission was 12 days, not really enough to know what moon gravity can do to a human over time.

I think there is some hope that low-but-not-zero gravity will have less pronounced effects in the long run.

> If technical books were in comic book form I would be happy--kinda like some military manuals? I just want the information. When I'm learning someting, I like a brief summary of what we're doing, or explaining. Then, I like simple numbered steps. Then give me the theory. The least amount of words; the better! I do like a lot of relevant pictures.

I think there could be a real market for that.

The deer analogy is very, very negative

I did.

> Why would I ever want to go through the purchase process if I'm on the fence and see this?

You must not be the target market. They want to sell to people who like knives that don't suck.

Also: Tablet PCs vs. iPads.

> Site owners has right to make living to

Site owners have the right to make a living. They do not have a right to waste my bandwidth, damage my hearing, or compromise my security.

> I think using ads-blocker is selfish act

Perhaps, but it's a reaction to the considerably more selfish trend in advertising.

Primarily I use ad-blocking and Greasemonkey. There are, of course, tons of others but I generally haven't found any that fit my usage.

For me, ad-blocking is necessary from a privacy and security standpoint. It's also nice to speed up page loads, decrease memory/CPU usage, and make websites actually usable. I do tend to disable it on sites that I trust.

This pretty much mirrors my experience. I'm using Edge on an ancient Thinkpad, and there are many days where I can use it with no issues at all. And then sometimes I click on a link to a news website and my computers grinds to a halt loading all the ads and autoplay videos.

I've also been fairly impressed with Edge on a low-spec machine. Realistically, once there is extension support and I can get an ad-blocker (ideally uBlock, and since it's rumored to be easy to port Chrome extensions I'm hopeful) I would have no issues using Edge as my daily browser.

> they're not pulling out of phones... just focusing on a fewer number of phones

Fewer models, to be exact. In contrast to their old strategy of saturating the low end with multitudes of confusingly numbered Lumias they're consolidating into three distinct lines. Presumably they want to have volume!

So this post is about a year old. Looking at the .NET blog, I don't see any direct follow-ups. How did this pan out?

> Would anyone believe me if I said I don't have a Twitter or Facebook account?

I'm in a similar situation. The only social media I have is a private Twitter account that I used for about 2 days and posted basically nothing to. People in general seem to understand my choice, though that might just be my social circle. I haven't yet been in a position where I've been asked to provide social media accounts for someone to check my credibility.

> There is no excuse for this when there are plenty of lower speed locations available. They should have used a large parking lot or similar.

At some point you probably want to test it at highway speeds. I agree that a closed course would be the only responsible option, however.