skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Of course small phones would fare badly when nothing good is for sale!

There's also the fact that what people use their phone for has radically changed in the past few years. Small phones are great for talking because they're light and easy to hold, and they're great for portability when they're not being used, but the number of minutes spent talking to people is continuing to fall, while the popularity of messaging and pictures is still growing - people want a device that's good for entering text and looking at images, and that necessitates a larger screen and keyboard.

A brilliant small phone would still do badly simply because the market for them is shrinking.
Someone who pushes the "nothing to hide" argument probably wouldn't understand the implication of your response. I suggest a different approach: say "Okay, in that case what prescriptions are you taking, how much money do you have in your bank account, and how often do you have sex? After all, you have nothing to hide right?"

That also puts them on the defensive side of the argument.
Although I can't use my Nexus 6P (5.7") with one hand and it barely fits in my pocket, I love the screen real estate.

Actually, I've not used my laptop or iPad once since I got it a month ago. The mobile-first movement makes a lot of sense, and I can really appreciate how people in third-world countries use their phone as their only computer. The larger screen makes the whole experience significantly better, to the point I don't really miss my tablet or laptop. When I want a larger screen, which is frequently, I use the Chromecast.
Ditching Scrum for Kanban - The best decision we’ve made as a team
Yeah, this isn't even that new -- currently people get the same effect by posting images of text. Allowing them to attach text is a logical improvement.
"Cultivate an identity as a Luddite." This coming from someone who writes their first draft using pen and paper.
Right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxIsuY_wnQ0
Switched my 4" smartphone and 8" tablet for a 6" phablet (Ascend Mate) a few years ago and it was the best thing I did.

Long battery and I can use it for most things I did on a tablet.

But with mobile VR coming along right now, everything seems to be optimized for 5" smartphones. I would love to buy a P8 Max, but depending on the Oculus Rift pricing, my next phone will probably be a <6" thing :\
> Secondly, almost any use of social media trains me to crave more -- it genuinely is addictive, and the unreliability of the novelty ("refreshing in the hope of seeing something new") makes this all the worse.

That's pretty much what it's designed to do. Really recommend reading "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked or watch some of the authors videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVDN2mjJpb8 or his talk at The Next Web https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z29RvrHPp1s
Agreed. Ive been frustrated looking at the tweet at the root of what I know is a long, branching conversation with many participants, unable to see the flow or follow it at all. Slashdot and Kuro5hin solved threaded/nested conversations over a decade ago. How does Twitter still suck at it?
> We both made the mistake of discussing the US government like it's a single entity.

I'm not making that mistake. I fully realize that the US government is comprised of many arms that even though some of those arms might have our collective best interests at heart this may not be the case for all of it.

> We're talking about hundreds or thousands of individuals spanning multiple generations.

So what. That only increases the chances of abuse, it does not diminish them at all. Just like in Nazi Germany there were plenty of people still fighting the good fight and at the same time employed by government. No government will ever be 100% rotten. But it does not have to be like that to do damage.

> I'm not going to worry about government metadata collection because of something that happened during the Eisenhower administration.

Because, let me guess that was too long ago and now it's different?

> Each person and group of people should be evaluated based on their own behavior and merits, not the reputation of the organization that they are affiliated with.

This is where you're flat-out wrong. Governments (and big corporations) have a life-span much longer than that of the individuals that are making it up, and as such we should look at them as entities rather than as collections of individuals.

If you'd be right then North Korea would not exist today as we know it (and neither would China, Iran and a bunch of other countries). The way these things work is that the general course will be slightly affected by the individuals but the momentum in the whole machinery is enormous. Think of it as a cable in which individual strands are replaced but the identity and purpose of the cable remains. Eventually you have a completely new cable and yet, nothing has changed. And in this case the entity has a huge influence on which parts of it will be replaced by who.

> It looks to me like the US agencies, and the Five Eyes in general, are capable people who are just doing their jobs.

That's a very very scary thing to say. "Just doing my job" has been used time and again historically to distance oneself from the responsibility taken when performing certain actions. Just doing your job is not the standard that needs to be met.

> They aren't bothering me and I'm not bothering them.

And most likely they never will.

"The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing"

> The past actions of the US government or hypothetical scenarios based on historical examples just aren't very convincing.

Of course they aren't. After all, it's not you that is personally inconvenienced in any way.

> Anything could happen. But I'm not going to concern myself with it until I see some evidence.

And none that will convince you will ever come. Because if it did it would be too late for you to change your stance anyway.
No disagreement here -- I know it's intentional. Thanks for the resources though.
New electric cars are not the best way to save the environment
In Indian colleges we're even encourage to use our phone in class for computer science. Android has got quite a few apps for programming languages.
If they log in as you to a third-party website (e.g. so they can change your calendar as in one of the examples), that information could be used by the third party to serve you targeted ads.

For example, if you ask them to get your Macbook fixed, and put a reminder in your calendar for when it's ready, that may result in you being served Apple ads.
This news was on the Windows 8 built-in news app on my start menu.
the smartphone market is crap. it seems almost like the economy of a communist country - everything is the same.

recently my husband and me were buying new phones. i had trouble finding a decent smartphone (decent = good specs) which is <= 4,5". incredibly annoying. i simply want a strong device that fits nicely in my pants pocket, and it seems that's a weird request... my husband wanted one with a physical keyboard - now that's science fiction. completely unavailable in Europe at the time (aside from ancient phones on eBay).

so, this trend analysis seems really ridiculous. consumers have a very limited choice in the matter. the companies behave like sheep, and most writing about the market is sycophantic crap.
Yeah I guess I should have expanded that some, separate data and messaging/phone number have to become popular more than they have to be offered.

I took some note of the LG watch and commented about it here, at which point someone pointed out that the Samsung Gear S has been available since 2014. I guess the tech to jam a cell phone in a watch will be mass market ready in 1 or 2 more generations (the Gear S is huge). Then the price point just needs to come down a bit.
What about Palantir, then?

Very hard to suggest they aren't supporting the police state.

It's unquestionable that the tech sector is directly culpable for supporting the cops and the politicians to spy on us... to affirm otherwise is counterfactual. The moral high ground belongs to the people who don't collaborate with those who would rather have us dumb and controlled.

It's pretty hard to respect the pro-surveillance view because it seems flatly head-in-sand ignorant of reality time and time again. We have evidence of surveillance state wrongdoing in hand, and no successes to point to while simultaneously experiencing multiple terror attacks, and yet the pro-surveillance types are steadfast in their position, as though it's a religion.

The Snowden files showed us explicitly that disrupting political groups is actually done via GCHQ! This is very far from protecting the citizens, and is instead stifling them purposefully.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...

I actively am discounting the opinion of people that do not understand this threat realized, currently unfolding threat to our democracy. An informed opinion doesn't sound like one passed via the government through the media.
Does it require a CloudMagic third party server to operate, or it is a plain vanilla email client?
Block Donald J Trump from UK Entry
> is how rare mass shootings are in the United States.

Mass killings in the US are very common.

If you include:

> More than four people shot and killed (not including the perpetrator)

> At one time

> In one place

> By one person

> In a public place

> Not including gang violence, armed robbery, or domestic violence

You get over 70 incidents in 30 years. That's more than 2 a year. Compare that to the whole of Europe, where you have maybe one per decade.

If you change the definition to include at least 4 people shot and injured, but not killed, you get over 250 per year in the US.

The US is extraordinarily violent among first world countries, even though violent crime has dropped.
That's not a factual claim. Known, proven therapies are known and proven, period. They aren't automatically better than an untested therapy, that would mean no new therapy could ever be an improvement.

Your statement is illogical.

FWIW I'm making no claim here as to the efficacy of either proven or unreviewed therapies just calling out unsound reasoning.
If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend you read Tradition of Freedom by Bernanos (original title in French: La France contre les robots).

Written in 1944, there is a specific passage where he argues against this "but I have nothing to hide!" argument, only criminals benefits from hiding, right ? He talks about how a simple citizen who never had trouble with the law should stay perfectly free to conceal his identity whenever he likes for whatever reason, and laments how this very idea already died.

The extract is available online [1] in French, the google translation [2] is not that good.

[1] http://www.books.fr/quand-bernanos-predisait-une-societe-sou...
[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...
> I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit.

Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified.

What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigorous experimental science. He (along with Bostrom) tends to engage in extreme hypotheticals. Which, sure if you're a philosopher, is fine. But even then, wouldn't you want your work to be judged by like-minded peers? But alas, here has a convenient excuse of being "auto didactic" to fall back on, so he can sit on his armchair and critique traditional education, and his lack of peer reviewed material.

Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. This sort of narcissistic, self congratulatory thinking is what puts me off more than anything. Writing long form posts on the Internet which use complicated words don't make you smart.

http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html is another critique. It comes off as bit crass, but stick with it.

> I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking.

There are other ways to improve your thinking. Read books. Read different kind of books, that offer counter point of views. Farnham Street Blog is a good place to start for a list of resources for thinking tools/mental models btw. :)
You can find some here: http://www.datomic.com/customers.html
British tech raises a record $3.6bn, but VCs deny bubble
Not trusting the government because they have a perpetually anti-freedom mindset is completely fair. Are we supposed to take their every action as piecemeal and then be constantly surprised when they do the wrong thing?

They don't just monitor criminals-- that's why the anti-surveillance folks are anti surveillance! They monitor everyone, and create criminals as needed, and nobody can question them for fear of ending up on the chopping block.

They are currently very far out of hand, and "we the people" are doing somewhere between jack and shit because of how little the people understand the problem.
There are so many unproven ideas and theses in the first (argumenting) sentence alone.

Maybe privacy is a right granted by someone. But do I need to fight for all rights? Can I not trade some for some others? E.g. I don't want to live in a completely free market, becaues in a completely free market thiefs and bullies always win. In our real life markets at least they need a lawyer's license first, which stops some of them from succeeding.

Does it really underpin freedom of expression? Is complete freedom of expression something that is worth fighting for, something people want? Look at something where expression is nearly completely free: Clothes. Most people tend to wear what other people wear.

Free society. What is that? Why do I need it?

Democratic society. Doesn't the current global development show that democracy is failing us? Every system comes to an end, and democracy certainly is behind the top of the hill.

I stopped reading after that sentence. If a blog post doesn't even think about the nuances of what they are talking about, there won't be much content anyways.

Just a little side note: I was in China three times now. Many people consider China very unfree, very undemocratic. But I see people there having more hope, more optimism and more opportunity to develop their dreams than we have in the west. And mobile internet is developing bigger and faster there than anywhere else, despite having nearly everything run via one mobile, government observed app: Wechat. In some regards I wonder if it is really "despite" government control or "because".
Computers in Music (1988)
That's good justification for there being few such models, but I see no decent small phones.

http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/?cat=umtsover&asd=on&asuc... says that right now, android phones up to 55m width have at most 512MB RAM, so they'll be sluggish or worse.
ad 2 - Sony's Compacts are pretty good. tho, no Gorilla glass (Sony has it's own, scratch-friendly thing), and they issue new models at such a stupidly quick pace, that the Z1 Compact which i have is already not getting updates any more (no Marshmallow) even though it's less than 2 years old, and almost identical to the Z3 which is getting the update. but i guess that happens with all producers...
There's a difference (on FB at least) between being "friends" and "following" someone. If you unfollow a friend, you'll still be connected, can communicate, see events, etc, you just won't see their posts in your news feed.
Turris Omnia, router with openhardware and software, honeypot, NAS and many more
Manufacturers are riding the large screen wave in my opinion because of two reasons:

1) Battery life is likely consumer's #1 complaint about their phones. If you have a big screen, you can pack a big battery under it.
2) "Arms-race" product differentiation ala "Mhz wars" on computers. "My screen is bigger than the last model..."

I miss my old Palm Pre phones. I don't need a big screen for checking my email and Facebook, doing some chats, some voice calls, playing some music, and reading the odd news article, which is what I use my phone for.

But as a consumer I am being forced down the large screen path, because that is all the market is offering for some time now.
That's an awful lot of faith in virtual currency and its speculative nature to be betting the next 50-60 years of your life.
I love this. We briefly flirted with scrum but now just have a much more Kanban-like system now, too. The only issue I foresee long term is that the sprint mentality of Scrum might recharge people and get them to, well, sprint, at product goals. Kanban, because it is never ending, might start to feel like a slog. There is never a way to have that feeling of "wow, we crushed it and cleared out our list. We are awesome." The list just extends forever. We have put measures in to help with this: primarily just having our engineers say at the beginning of the week what they hope/plan to get done this week (or two). Sometimes that is just noting subtasks in pursuit of a larger feature, but at least it borrows some of what is a very powerful part of Scrum: the social commitment that comes from standing up and saying "this is what I will finish this sprint."
Long-history.sh
> But there are many very high quality ones too.

Doesn't mean there are any 'high-quality' ones appropriate for the specific task.

> Be more careful about how you choose one, and if you can't find a good one for your needs, then don't settle for a bad one - roll the feature yourself, or adjust the functionality of your app.

So now you're just contributing to the problem of yet another package in the ecosystem?
Record-Breaking Holiday Season for the App Store
In reality, the software engineers that work for the above are the goons of the bad guys, and we cannot allow them to continue their work as it is detrimental to our interests. Any amount of perspective informs them that what they are doing is not supportive of a democratic state, yet they continue anyway.

Why must we accommodate their subservience? Following orders is no excuse.
Logging ServiceStack requests with Seq
Sorry for the snark, but...

How about a service that answers texts like, "where can I find a warm place to stay tonight?" or "please get the welfare department to correct their mistake and reactivate my food stamps."
Two Brothers Making Millions Off the Refugee Crisis in Scandinavia
the comparison between dalvik & xamarin is not that interesting anymore (it was in 2012 though). It would be interesting to remake this bench.

Why doesn't Google ditch java ?

Because such a switch would be very costly and there are many more cost effective ways to improve the platform (like for example databinding).

I also doubt that Google would choose a language controlled by Microsoft, they had enough trouble with the java lawsuit..

if the rumors of the merge of Android & ChromeOS are true, maybe this will be accompanied with with a big framework change ?
It will depend on how this plan materialize exactly but that would be the right time for that.
The samsung note was released in 2011. I'm not sure what the average upgrade cycle is at the moment, but IMHO that seems like sufficient overlap that owners of the original note would have returned to smaller phones if they preferred them. They don't.
> Twitter's core and unique feature is micro blogging platform

Trust me, from many, many discussions with people at Twitter, they absolutely do not see themselves as a micro-blogging platform, and do not enjoy the comparison.
Yes because you assume the people who are collecting your data are ethical, secure and will always share your opinions and beliefs.

Say your bank account information was stolen and someone used it to blackmail you because as you said it would have, "implications in some social aspects".

Say the country you live in converted to a religion you are not part of or want to be any part of. Imagine if they had a record of your beliefs and used it as a handy tool in mass genocide.

Say someone working for the government or a start up was jealous of something you had, and used their access to take your information in order to discredit you.

Say you medical information was sold by a fitness start up that went bust and sold to insurance companies to bump your premium.
> It's the 80/20 rule for me. Think about the type of client (individual user/corporation) that is still using < IE 10. I'd wager that they're well paying, yet difficult to deal with.

At an entity level, they may be difficult to deal with, but at the level of an individual in the organisation they know their company has problems. These people move around, and personal relationships are really important long term. This is my main motivating factor.

As long as the client pays (20% of revenue...) and there are no other risks, I'm happy to employ a front end developer who has probably has years of experience making IE6/7 degrade somewhat gracefully. If it were my own product, my own time, my own cost, absolutely not, but if sales were assured with this type of customer, sure.

This is a personal opinion. No one client is the same. I find it interesting to contrast 2 clients I work with who are in differing fields of the same space: (massive names in) financial services: One does QA on only the latest stable version of major browsers (down to Opera, my personal favourite) browser on Windows and Mac; The other does QA on any browser or platform with 2% visitor share (measured by visitors to their website), and also accommodates customers who may be on something obscure but the customer demands it. The former's approach sounds pretty aggressive r.e. serving, or not serving, the customer, but the latter's caused them to avoid abandoning a really backward platform for 5+ years for all customers. Swings and roundabouts. Interesting how we take varying judgments.
What restaurants and sandwiches can teach you about rejecting applicants
ISIS “Jihadi Technical College” Developing Driverless Car Bombs
Funny how this is now considered a bad thing when the only country ever to murder innocents and children with one is America.
HN and Reddit are dopamine hit factories.
INFOGRAPHIC: Content Marketing Trends for 2016
Brick killed a guy! Yeah!
I dont understand this comment, should he be using quill pen, or starting an oral history to be more of a luddite?
ES6 is pretty straightforward. You use Browserify or Webpack with Babel, and set it up to build with Gulp or Grunt.

I don't see how using Dart, TS, etc. make it any asier, and with the setup I just described, you're using Javascript top to bottom. I have an Angular project set up this way, and that allows me to run the unit tests in Node on the command line.
"I used a Pentax K1000"

I got one of those as a gift, probably so I'd stop borrowing his Spotmatic (the K1000 was basically an 80s version of the 60s Spotmatic, with an annoyingly different lens mount).

I think a large aspect of picture quality when we were kids, is rich grandpa can give you triple digits worth of camera at Christmas, but I paid my own way on consumables and I had to push a broom at the food store for something like ten minutes per pix once all the costs of analog were accounted for. Large sheets of photo paper for enlargements were not cheap, either.

Something often overlooked is the analog era was extremely expensive.
> ...VR/AR will make the screen go away completely.

Sorry. No, it's not. And no, people are most certainly not going to want to be seen with a headset on (outside of playing games).