tjl

I typically export mail regularly. In my case, I store them in a DEVONthink Pro Office database as that supports directly importing from Apple's Mail.app, has good search, and good cross-referencing support.

I really wish I followed this practice sooner as there's mail from the 90s I wish I still had. I've used e-mail continuously since 1991 so it would be a lot of mail. Disk space is the main reason why I didn't do it sooner.

At least in that case there's a physical product. I don't mind patents, but I prefer the original version where you needed a physical implementation.

I don't know about his design in particular, but I have the mechanical and electronic skills to design something that would likely infringe on his patent and I haven't read the patent or even looked at a breakdown of a hoverboard. The patent probably doesn't meet the novelty requirements.

It may be that they were waiting for the outcome of this trial. If they are successful against Apple that would likely improve their chances of succeeding against Google. It's a pretty common patent litigation approach.

I remember when I first learnt Python. It seemed so similar to the pseudocode that I was taught to write first when I was working on a problem. As a result, I will often prototype an algorithm first in Python before I try it in something else.

There's a number of projects as part of Google X that have little to do with any of Google's core businesses. They don't really need engineers specializing in fluid mechanics outside of Google X. I interviewed for a mechanical engineering Google X position a few years back. I note that the project I interviewed for still hasn't come out of their lab yet.

Because they don't want people to worry about what is open. That's what I understand is their reasoning. I don't really agree with it, though.

In the Dock Preferences, click the box "Show indicators for open applications". You should get a black dot under (or to the side) of the app icon. I've used this setting for years.

Really? That's odd. The iOS Contacts app merges Facetime and phone calls, but at least that's somewhat reasonable as that's still a call. CallKit in iOS 10 is standardizing it so all VOIP calls will be treated the same as FaceTime and phone calls.

iOS Contacts has a set of icons that look like the symbols on the app icons. That makes sense to me.

My parents had a contact book when I was little (back in the 80s), but they eventually went to a system of cards standing up in a tray separated by last letter. It made it easy to pull it out when you wanted to make a call. They now have a mixed system where their most used phone numbers are in their iPhone contacts, but they have still have that tray for everybody else.

I had a contacts section in my DayTimer back in the 90s, but I've used a contacts program ever since I switched to using a computer-based calendar.

Android only had that opportunity because Apple changed the basic design of smartphones. Until the iPhone, Android was more like the Blackberry of the time. Of course, it wasn't until a few years later that Android phones were decent as the initial ones had issues.

I can point to one service Apple has done right, Messages.

I was more thinking about that Hull and Kanata are both enough outside Ottawa that they're in the NCR, but not Ottawa. But, Orleans is right by the main part of Ottawa so I know a lot of people who just thought of it as Ottawa.

I lived in Ottawa for about 3 years (and my aunt, uncle, and cousins all live in the area).

Back in the 90s, I was doing telecommunications standards and one operator proposed storing all the performance information right on the optical switches. Given that a large amount of performance metrics were being generated every second, the vendors all had looks of horror on their face. Seeing that nobody else from a vendor was going to speak up, I calmly explained just what he was asking for. We could theoretically do it, but the cost would be massive. He promptly dropped the proposal.

True, but that's also true for a number of those other cities. Ottawa has both Kanata and Hull for example (and possibly Orleans depending on what you consider Ottawa). My aunt and uncle own a berry farm within a short drive to Ottawa as well so there's a number of small towns around it (within about 30 minutes drive or so).

My sister lives in a city right by Montreal, but most people would consider it to be Montreal if you don't live in the area.

Actually, they are part of the normal Google pipeline (or at least they were before the Alphabet split). A few years ago, I was contacted by a recruiter from Google and after talking to her I ended up being interviewed by someone for a job at Google X.

I know a friend of mine used category theory heavily in his Ph.D. thesis which was related to GIS and optimization. I keep meaning to learn more category theory so I can have a chance of understanding his thesis.

The problem with that statistic is that it lumps all taxes together.

Hmm, it's a Dover book. That alone makes me think it's probably a good one as they have a habit of reprinting some excellent books that would otherwise be out of print. I'll have to check it out. Thanks!

There's two basic approaches to calculus of variations. One is based around the Gateaux Variation which basically is an extension of the normal derivative. So the vector x becomes x + epsilon*v and you take the limit as epsilon goes to zero. The second is due to Lagrange and uses the symbol lower case delta. The both amount to the same thing, but the notation is different. There's epsilon in the Lagrange approach, it's just buried.

For Lagrange's approach, I recommend Lanczos' "The Variational Principles of Mechanics". It's published by Dover so if you can't find it in a library, it's only about $10 last I checked. For the other approach, we used John Troutman's "Variational Calculus and Optimal Control: Optimization with Elementary Convexity" in my Applied Math course on calculus of variations. It's good, but I don't think it's too approachable if you haven't had the lectures to go with it.

I've done a lot of work with calculus of variations including working out the math for volume integration of variational gradients which is something that appears in beam deformation problems.

One day I'll sit down and write books on calculus of variations, finite element analysis, and mechanics of deformable bodies. I was very unsatisfied with the texts I used for all of these in my undergrad and grad programs.

I'm using the previous version of DayOne as I want it to use Dropbox rather than their sync system. I'll keep using it until the app no longer works.

I've been considering trying to put together an org-mode compatible mobile app that would support photos (syncing them to the same Dropbox folder), but that's tricky.

I think the success of Pokemon GO will open up people to the possibilities of AR apps and hopefully, we'll see more apps that use AR and the GPS in innovative ways.

I already feel annoyance with my past self reading my old code. For example, "Why did you code it this way? Are you an idiot?" I've since added more comments explaining certain decisions after thinking something was a bug, but it was just a bit unintuitive in the hope that I annoy my future self less.

One problem is that people often misuse the term "disruption" to mean different things.

Like you said, it's about travelling and finding Pokemon. That's what kids who saw the anime and played the game wanted to be able to do. Pokemon GO delivers on that desire.

I think it also helps that Pokemon GO simplified the experience from Ingress which makes it more accessible to a wider variety of people.

You shouldn't need to. It runs under LLDB so it should be able to examine anything you can debug.

What bothers me so much is that his father is both an excellent teacher and researcher so he should have a good role model. I took a course from his father during my undergrad.

People often assumed that if you had something physical, you had something mental as well.

As someone who is disabled and when I was younger was called retarded, I want to be called disabled. For one, people have a particular way of saying retarded that's very insulting. I was okay with the traditional term at the time, handicapped. That describes things in a far less insulting fashion.

People tended to use retarded as referring to one's mental abilities and assumed that if you have a physical disability, you have a mental one. That was the biggest problem with retarded.

The best source I know of on early iPhone is the Nitin Ganatra episodes of the Debug Podcast [0]. He was in charge of the early iOS apps from before the iPhone shipped so he talked about those days. Those podcasts and the ones he did with Don Melton (former head of Safari team at Apple) are all excellent for getting insight into behind the scenes at Apple.

[0] http://www.imore.com/debug

I typically have used either Beamer (what I currently use) or Prosper (what I used to use) document classes in LaTeX for my slides and have since probably the 90s. For me, the big thing with using LaTeX is that I can get consistent fonts between the equations on my slides and the symbols in my figures since I draw my figures using LaTeX in some way (usually TikZ or Sketch[0]). Plus, I can have my figures under source control in a manner that supports simple diffs.

[0] http://sketch4latex.sourceforge.net/

Note that Sourceforge was down when I checked, but this should be the right URL.