jsankey

The problem for me, when I tried Siri, is it just didn't understand me often enough. You can have all the integration you want, but it doesn't help if the recognition isn't up to scratch.

I think your broad point is true: Google's reco is better, Siri's integration is deeper, but you really need both to make it useful.

Maybe because he wants to go exactly one page down as easily as possible, and this is something that has generally worked for decades. It's pretty simple, really.

That's not quite fair: on Twitter you choose who to follow, so there's still a filter. In fact in some ways a superior filter -- I can't select which votes I want to count on HN, but I effectively can on Twitter (or could, if I used it actively).

Indeed, and a very real scenario that is already starting to play out is the evolution of bacteria outpacing development of new antibiotics. We've quickly forgotten the impact these diseases had just a century ago, and without further breakthroughs (which of course are very possible) we could easily see, e.g. TB return as a major cause of death worldwide (i.e. even in developed countries).

It's not only our own biological evolution that deeply affects us.

It's definitely not black and white, and I called out Android for specifically that reason. I wasn't actually aware that maps was not a web product at all when acquired so you're quite right that it fits into the same category.

To take the tangent further off topic it's interesting to me that Google's greatest successes post-search/ads appear to be these strategic products. Not things that bring direct profits, but those that allow them to influence the major platforms (mobile, web). Committing key resources in this way speaks of long-term thinking that other companies could learn from.

While I think the grandparent is understating Google's success, it's worth noting that in your list AdWords comes under search (to me, at least), and the only other item that wasn't born out of acquisition is Chrome. Of course this is a perfectly rational strategy for Google and in the case of, e.g. Android, what they've managed to do with it since acquisition is remarkable. It's just worth remembering a lot of the successes come from spotting a startup on the rise and snapping it up.

Hover over some low contrast text and you'll see what they're trying to do, although it is not obvious and probably not mobile-friendly.

To be fair any code base with the age and size of Office is a massive thing to manage. Completely rethinking the UI is hard enough, but then implementing it? It would be miraculous if they managed that the first time out of the gate.

Yes, I love this little detail. The posted Siri example could use the same thing - since I don't always know the date, it would be nice to see it as a relative time (i.e. Did you mean: 8.5 hours from now, or 1 day 8.5 hours?).

In Australia we have "mandatory" voting. But actually it is only mandatory that you turn up -- you can deliberately vote "informal" if you don't actually want to cast a vote, and many people do just that (5.5% in the last federal election, although probably more like 2.5-3% of these are deliberate refusals to vote).

This is my preferred system. To me, you don't want to absolute force people to vote. But you do want to remove the bias that exists because turning out to vote is easier for some people than others (and it tends to be easier for the more privileged). Other factors help too: e.g. polling is on the weekend.

Re: apathy, the solution is not to ignore the disenfranchised, but to engage them. True representation is not about suiting those with the most free time and energy.

You're being unnecessarily hostile. Obviously our experiences have been different having used the same tools on different projects. I find plenty of problems with both IDEs, but for me Xcode has been the more painful because of bugs.

tools.android.com/recent/usingthendkplugin

It's a relatively new addition, and as warned above it still might not work in all setups in my experience. But it's worth a go.

There is support for debugging native code with gdb, and in the latest Android tools releases this is integrated into Eclipse via the CDT. However, it can still be difficult to set up - if it doesn't work the easy way it's very difficult to figure out how to fix it.

And although there are quirks (mainly performance related) in the ADT/Eclipse combo your description is far from my experience. The overall experience is better, IMO, than Xcode. The latter is the buggiest IDE I've ever used.

Frankly AppCode/IntelliJ beat both in many respects, but frustratingly don't quite cover the full range of functionality. It's difficult to make the leap when you need to go back to Xcode/Eclipse to accomplish some of your work each day.

Macros in C are a far cry from hygienic macros: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienic_macro.

Eclipse is bloated, granted, but if you think its strong point is "dragging and dropping getters and setters" then you haven't seriously tried it. I used to think IDEs didn't matter much for basic code editing, but had to change my opinion after using Eclipse and IntelliJ (my preference) for a while. Higher-level (as in -- with knowledge of the programming language) editing and refactoring can make a big difference to your editing experience. Tasks that were tedious become trivial and part of the normal flow. You actually find yourself writing code in a different way once you understand how easily you can manipulate blocks of code (rather than just blocks of text).

I look at it as another step towards s/street/everything in street view. It needs work, sure, but it's good to see they're expanding.

I think you're grossly underestimating the skill required to "handle the interpersonal items" if you think you can get it done for $15 per hour.

A great $200 tablet is coming soon, and when it does it will be huge. Tablets start looking a lot less like a luxury at that price point.

This is still pure rumor, though.

I assume that was his point. However it is not a given that running is "very detrimental to your health"; in fact that's a pretty bold claim to make without any evidence or indeed consideration of the health benefits. It's true that knee problems are a concern for some runners (and indeed participants in many other sports), and something frequent runners should be wary of.

1) Running has an appealing simplicity: very little equipment is required (just a decent pair of shoes), you can do it anywhere (city/country, on/off road), etc. 2) Biking is not some magical risk-free activity, you have to take care whichever you choose.

Absolutely. And if you work for yourself from home, and thus miss out on the social interaction of an office, team sports are a great way to unwind and mingle.

The biggest problem with this theory is that iTunes is hardly an enjoyable experience on OSX either!

The Google bashing at the end makes no sense. On the one hand he mentions that Google have copied things from Apple. On the other he claims Google seem to think they don't need to change anything. Which is it?

It's pretty clear to me that each new version of Android takes inspiration from iOS (and vice-versa, not to mention things they've both seen in WebOS). I think it's great -- the competition is definitely driving both platforms forward. Methinks there is some prejudice at play if you can't acknowledge this.

I think it's too easy to look at people in these positions and say they just don't get it. This is their industry, they're immersed in it every day. They may not have seen this coming, but it's been in their face for a while now, and even if a few can't see what's going on I simply can't believe that none of them do. At best I would say any "ignorance" could still be tied back to incentives: even if they know the truth, it's inconvenient and not worth acknowledging widely (or perhaps even to themselves). Better to keep on peddling the line that piracy is theft to preserve the status quo as long as possible.

It seems obvious that the best long term strategy for media companies is to start addressing the demand. Indeed, over the long term, any other strategy will likely result in those companies being left behind.

But if you're in charge of a media company today, and your bonus this year is tied to a cash cow you can keep alive for a few more years, would you be taking the risk and short term pain of making the transition?

I don't think it's stubbornness or stupidity we're looking at, it's a classic case of misaligned incentives.

> How would you implement this without closures?

You don't have to look too far to find out: blocks haven't always been supported, and the older animation APIs still exist on UIView. You need to set a completion callback selector instead of passing a block. It's certainly uglier, on both sides of the API, but particularly on the implementation side. Blocks wrap up the state they need by default (well, for the majority of cases) which saves a lot of tedious work.

I think if you consistently did this you would end up overpaying, for a few reasons. It's pretty common for offers to be made on the high side as an incentive to sign on, for example. People could get higher offers from places that have less appealing work (i.e. the job is not more valuable overall). Generally if you're always matching the highest offer, you're probably paying above the fairest sustainable wage.

You honestly don't believe their data solely because it doesn't match your personal experience? You are just one user after all!

Personally I see crashes on iOS a couple of times a week, and I hardly use third-party apps. Most of my crashes are Safari!

The strength of Java for many years has been the platform, and indeed the surrounding ecosystem, not the language. In that sense it's no surprise that there is a lot of effort going in to providing better languages on that platform.

Yes, that is exactly the distinction I'm talking about. And I agree this is something that's pretty difficult to measure, probably impossible to measure precisely.

I completely agree also that the language can have an impact on the abstractions you choose. Some abstractions are obvious in one language and obscure in another. I wouldn't defend Java against a better example than in the original post, it certainly has its weaknesses. But I find that most examples just show bad Java code, not that Java itself is bad, which is not enlightening and frankly becomes tiresome.

On a related note, I think a lot of people underrate the influence of tools on code quality too. They might complain Java IDEs are a crutch that merely let you work around the language's weaknesses. I think they're a lot more than that -- when I start working in a seriously powerful IDE for the first time I was surprised how much it influenced my coding. Powerful automatic refactoring just makes it so trivial to do the Right Thing (give something a better name, factor out a method, etc). Beforehand I would have said that all you need is discipline to create code of the same quality without the IDE. Now I'd say even discipline and good intentions have their limits.