My thoughts exactly. I have two apps out on Google Play. They are full featured, stable, and people still like them. I just want them to to continue to work. But they don't. I need to constantly take away from my time developing new apps to fix my newly broken old apps. How many times, Google, are you going to try to "fix" the problem of apps draining battery in the background? It never seems to end.
On the flip side, my first programs that I wrote for myself in the 90's still run. Yeah, I know that DOS is emulated now, but MS made them still work, and I didn't even have to re-compile.
I have this conspiracy theory that Google is purposefully trying to make things difficult to get rid of developers that don't have a lot of resources.
The American lifestyle/diet and healthcare costs are two separate issues that both desperately need to be solved. What a lot of people don't know outside the U.S., is that the obesity crisis exists in upper class and upper-middle class, but is a completely different animal among the poor and working poor. I grew up in a working-poor family, and kept that same social group until about 10 years ago.
The culture around food is completely destroyed. Social gatherings revolve around unhealthy food. There is generally not the understanding that the choices for what you eat is the major reason for obesity. The poor are lied to so much, they don't know what to believe, and the prevailing opinion tends to be that it is mostly due to genetics (how could that be, we have the same genes as 1-2 generations ago) or character (laziness, but I was obese in the past and worked a full time job and two part time jobs). In the past, the poor would get info from cable news, or not at all. Today, they get their news from Dr. Oz feeds on Facebook telling them to lose weight with various forms of snake oil.
While there is quite the gym culture in the U.S. in upper middle class, lower class does not have money for the gym, but mainly their metabolism is so shot from the foods they eat that they don't have the energy to go to the gym.
The government and the medical field in general could do a lot to move the needle on the terrible food culture, but they don't. They in fact made the terrible food pyramid, that tells people to eat grains above all else, and says nothing about the processing of the foods that they eat. And the foods they eat are processed to the nth degree. When I eat with some of my old friends or family that are still a part of my old culture, I am always amazed by how terrible the cheap food is here. It really doesn't even taste like food. Potato chips, rubbery chicken nuggets, soda, Totinos pizza, TV dinners, Hamburger Helper, I could go on...
Why should property rights be the same for a commercial enterprise as someone's actual home? Not sure about unintended consequences on this one, but I would rather have a law be in place to allow more home ownership over more investment properties. As someone who grew up in a rental, and rented for the first 10 years, I see the benefits in home ownership.
Wow. This is a failure from so many parties. The pilots for not knowing the correct procedure. Boeing (who should bear the majority of the blame) for allowing sensors that are not properly redundant, purchasing sensors that appear to fault on a regular basis, not properly training, and not making sure that a problem that was well understood can never happen again, the airline for not informing the next crew of problems from previous flights, the regulators of the United States and Ethiopia for allowing these mistakes to happen.
Proof that Apple has anorexia: 5mm thin on the outer edge of the all-in-one computer and monitor. Thinner than a lot of monitor-only's everywhere else. What is the purpose? Who would not trade a thicker stationary monitor for better upgrade-ability and/or a cheaper price? Look behind your monitor - odds are, it's just a bunch of empty space behind it on your desk. I would love to be a little bird on the wall in the Apple strategy meetings where they decided that iMacs need to be that thin. I still have an old iMac G3 kicking around from 1999. It's over a foot deep, just takes up the empty space behind the screen on the desk - no big deal.
I used this in the mid- to late-90's on my 80386 (which was very much out of date at the time, but was all I had). I was very new to computing at the time, and the only other languages that I had under my belt were QuickBASIC and 80386 assembler, so I can't comment on if it were a "good" language or not. After less than a year, I ended up abandoning it, preferring to use QuickBASIC for high level, and machine language for low, not feeling like I needed the intermediate C--.
Wait, is Amazon the US government now? Should I send my tax money to Amazon instead? This is not cool, we should not have to pay Amazon money to watch our publicly funded television.
I don't buy that PBS doesn't "have the money" to make programs freely available. Running radio antennas back in the day costed money. At the very least, PBS could seed torrents, or upload to YouTube. I understand that neither of these methods are exactly free from any cost, but at least give us the choice.
It's possible that it's because they are market dominating, that they have a different focus on which features to bring first than Krita. BTW I have been using Krita for about 2 years, and used to have a dual-boot with Windows, just for a better experience using Photoshop. I now actually like Krita better than Photoshop, so don't use the dual boot anymore. It's that good. My version of Photoshop was a bit dated that I am comparing it to, but I have been a Photoshop user since the late 90's, so I'm pretty familiar with their pace of advancement.
The prevailing opinion is to just let the scientists do their work, and don't second-guess them. Well, there is a reason that they are being second-guessed. Look at all the harm that has occurred because of the old scientific consensus that we should be removing fats from our diet. The reasons for this consensus was not only shoddy studies, but there was a lot of politics involved, drowning out dissenting voices. Today, there are a lot of studies being funded by organizations that are influencing the results of those studies.
We should be questioning scientific studies. The problem is, people are going about it the wrong way. They are just throwing out the scientific method, logic, etc. Science is not flawed, but the studies are flawed, in that more than just science is being used to influence conclusions.
There has to be some blame put on the scientific community for why it is so popular to question their work in the modern era.
When I was a child, I would suffer from terrible muscle contractions in my calves. I would get a charlie horse in the middle of the night, and it would not go away completely for over a day. I couldn't put my foot flat to walk properly, and it was very painful. After about a dozen of these attacks, I noticed a pattern - they would occur on the night before something that I was dreading - a test I wasn't prepared for, a school dance, etc. Once I realized this, it never came back again. On the outside, it appeared that I was faking the muscle issues, but actually, my mind was causing charlie horses deliberately. It was very odd, but will always stick with me that the connections between body and mind are not well understood.
First and foremost, you have to be healthy, mentally, emotionally, and physically (yes, physically). If you are not up to par, get these out of the way, first. Go to the gym, sleep well, eat well, don't consume mind-altering substances (for me, even caffeine has been shown to hurt my performance), don't be in an unhealthy relationship that is a constant distraction. I like to think of mental performance as a racing engine. You can have a dirty fuel filter, and not notice it because the air filter is plugged, and the spark plugs are misfiring. Only once everything else is fixed, do you begin to feel the horsepower from all cylinders firing.
Another thing that has helped me immensely, is listening to Jordan Peterson. If you can get beyond his political bent, you realize that he has a lot to teach to motivate. The main take away that has helped me become motivated, is the realization that you must be working towards something that is both difficult, and will significantly change your life. Listening to his lectures has helped me go back to working on a project that I had stalled for a year, and I have been working 40+ hours on it each week for months now (In addition to my 40 hour regular job).
So what, was Whole Foods giving employees more hours than what was required to have the store functioning properly, simply because labor was cheap? That doesn't add up, to me. Also, this is discounting the value of the employee's time. Like, if they get the same paycheck, but are working fewer hours for it, that's of no benefit to them.
Wow, NASM is really a blast from the past for me. 80386 assembly was my second "language" that I learned, after various forms of BASIC (on TRS-80 and QuickBASIC). In the mid-90's I was a teenager, and would write most of my code in QuickBASIC, and make optimized code in NASM. QuickBASIC was a compiled BASIC, but still pretty slow on a 386, so about half of my code base ended up being assembly.
At one point, I made my own pseudo-language, which was actually just a few dozen commands that would be translated into NASM, to make programming in assembly much easier to deal with. I ran out of room on my 40mb hard drive, and also ran out of backup floppies that worked (I would 3x backup my important stuff, because the mid-90's was a terrible time for reliable magnetic media on a budget), so I would periodically delete source code that I had spent weeks programming. The interpreter was one of those casualties, which, thinking back, was a really dumb move (I was 15 or so, cut me some slack!), because I still kept a lot of programs that needed that interpreter to compile. I have those codebases to this day, and can run the executable on my retro DOS machines, view the code, but no compilation :-(
I can't remember what my old assembler was, but I do remember NASM was a dream compared to whatever other assembler I was running at the time. I'm happy to see that it is still kicking.
In case anyone is wondering why I would be running a 386 in the mid 90's with a 40mb hdd (and 1mb RAM!), it's just because my parents had the time had no money, and to them a computer was a computer - they couldn't see the advantage of 1mb vs 16mb of RAM, people in general were much less computer savvy. It wasn't until my 30's that my mother realized that my time programming computers as a teenager was actually something productive!
Tesla - love them or hate them, you have to admit, this move is bold, even borderline insane. I can't tell if this is going to save the company or wreck them, but I have to admire the balls of the leadership! At the end of the day, I think it's a pro-consumer move, provided Tesla allows independent re-sellers to cater to those who want a more traditional experience.
Companies need to leave the policing to the police. Also, hate speech is not illegal in USA, nor should it be. It is a complicated issue - everything that is wrong should not be illegal or banned.
Making a good FLOSS product and relying on donations alone would be a foolish career choice, agreed. You need to be creative on how you earn income, and it can be done. That being said, if you are looking for the easiest way to make money as a developer, FLOSS is not the answer, for sure. You need to have a passion for it.
If they are smart, they will have their margins adjusted to support a niche device. There are a few people (including myself) that are willing to sacrifice a beautiful UI for all the good things that go along with a user-respecting OS.
Also, they have a lot of time. I have made a few UI's myself back in the DOS days, before they were always readily available. First I would make it work, then I would make it look good.
Digital computation has been able to rise to this level of complexity because we can precisely predict/repeat outcomes because of exact numbers and boolean logic. I could not fathom anything like what we have using analog. I was reading the article, waiting for some type of plan for how to tackle analog computing, but it never came. A thought provoking article, but I'm not holding my breath for analog.
I grew up poor, and out of (mechanical) engineering college new a grand total of zero engineers. I would still be unemployed to this day if this type of hiring were the norm (although it is not entirely uncommon). I can also say, that the engineers that we have had come through our organization based on referrals have not been the best quality. They tend to be engineers that are generally likeable, but not very good. Referrals are probably the way with the least friction to hire someone, so any time the way with the least friction is not being used as much, you have to wonder why.
So the paper describes a way to make new neurons. Any indication that adding new neurons will actually improve cognitive abilities? I know nothing about neuroscience, but I could see a scenario where it is analogous to adding a computer to a computer room, with nothing on the hard drive, and no network connection.
Chinese companies are much more likely than Western companies to be forced by the government to do something that may not be aligned with their business interests. It's just easier for the government to get away with it, and they have the incentive.
So far no one has seen the utility of this vehicle. There are millions of families that have multiple vehicles, and where both partners work. When taking a trip as a family, they might want a minivan or SUV. When they commute, one might drop the kids off, but the other will be driving alone. If the commute is not a very long one, this vehicle is perfect.
There are at least a few million households with this configuration in North America, so they have plenty of potential market. I can think of a few more use cases, but this (which is also MY situation) is possibly the largest.
I'm going to play a bit of wait-and-see, but if this vehicle turns out to come to fruition and isn't plagued with reliability issues, I am strongly considering purchasing one. Right now, we have a newer minivan, two motorcycles, and I usually drive my car to work, which is older, and is often breaking down. I live in Upstate New York, so there are a couple dozen days each year where it's dry and warm enough at 6AM to ride my motorcycle to work.
So what am I left with? I don't want to deal with repairing an older vehicle, and I am happy with the utility of our minivan, and fun factor of our motorcycles, so I just want something with the lowest hassle and cost of ownership. This vehicle is pretty close to the cheapest new car that you can get, but will save me most of my $120/mo that I spend on gas. Plus, it has to be easy to park at that size.
I think that if they can pull off a good design, at a good price, and get all of the other things right (I know, a tall order), they will have a market at least large enough to keep that factory going.
My "despicable" side business is (was) making Android apps with Admob ads. I needed to update my app to allow EU users to opt out of targeted ads. Why Admob doesn't just add this functionality to their widget they place in my app is beyond me. In order to update my apps, I need to target a newer version of Android. It's not that it's very outdated, they were targeting Android 5.0, and get updated every 6 months or so. But a change in the Android API has made this very difficult for me. Being a side business, I had to make the choice - let go of the $600/mo I was making from ad revenue, or continue with the constant barrage of code updates required from Google for my apps to work. I decided to let it go. My app would still be on Google Play, even though I couldn't update it, if it weren't for GDPR. They pulled it due to non-GDPR compliance. So, yeah, GDPR has costed me $600/mo. I'm sure there are a lot of others with complex stories about how these regulations affect them. BTW I support GDPR and privacy as a whole, and wish my native USA would take privacy more seriously. It is the details of the implementation that are lacking. I also suspect that Google uses policies (such as putting the burden of Admob GDPR compliance on the publishers) to try to push out small developers.
I think that the Arduino is worth mentioning, even though it fails the "power on to basic" need of the OP. Once setup, it is fairly easy to compile and upload to the board, and there is a lot that you can do with it, if they are not to into making thier own video games.
Looks like you found a bug in the Google Keyboard on the final beta of Android Nougat on the Nexus 6P! That symbol shows up on the Google Keyboard in place of percent.
I do understand the need for people to see others that look like themselves, but at what cost? Here is the cost: when you say you want "larger percent of X demographic", you could also say you want a "smaller percent of Y demographic". A company is not simply going to have a bigger workforce to fit more black women, they are going to pass on some Asian man to fit them in. That's a disservice to some hard working people. We are, after all, people. We all want different things in life.
The nation is somewhere around 12℅ black, and a little over 50℅ female. Am I the only one that just doesn't see a problem with Apple being 9℅ black and 37℅ female? That is not close enough? Will people only be satisfied when companies exactly match the demographics of the countries they operate in? There are many more white, Asian, and Indian males that graduate with tech degrees, so Apple is to ignore this when hiring? It's not Apples fault that there are fewer minorities and women graduating with STEM degrees. America is so damn race obsessed.
I do feel bad for this guy, because I feel that the majority of what he says is true, but it just can't be true that an employer saying he didn't work somewhere that he did is effective "blacklisting". I have worked a few places and received several job offers that I declined, and don't know of one case where my previous employer was contacted. I was told by HR at a fortune 200 company that I worked for as a mechanical engineer that they would not confirm or deny to anyone that I ever even worked there. I think that contacting previous employers doesn't happen much because so many people would lie. If the prospective employee was a charismatic fool, the previous employer could gloss over incompetence. If he was a great worker, but the previous employer was sore about him leaving, they could embellish on any shortcomings. Sir, if you are reading this, let go of the past and look inside for what needs to be fixed.
Sugar and corn syrup seem like glaring omissions, given that a lot of recent data suggests that sugar is much more of a leading cause of obesity than we once thought. It would also have been nice to see some indication of the processing involved - for example, wheat is there, but what part of the wheat is consumed by humans