RhodaLs

Six years ago it was possible to use Dropbox as the files intermediary. With the current version (13) of iOS, there's a fairly direct access to files. There's a files explorer with support for connections to network shares & external drives. Apple is less interested in abstracting them away as they used to be.

You can very easily use your iPad as a reader for arbitrarily downloaded ebooks. Go to Gutenberg or Archive.org or the pirate site of your choice. Select a book. Select the format. Epubs and PDFs have the option of being sent to iBooks. Mobi can be opened with a compatible reader app if you have one installed. And the file can be saved to Dropbox or whatever file service you have installed. With the latest version of iOS (IpadOS) you can save to your Downloads folder or even to a connected storage device, or to a file share on your local network. You can also load books via Dropbox, local network, or connected storage.

I do this all the time. For me, it's convenient to use Dropbox as the intermediary, but there's plenty of other ways too.

You made something very simple and beautiful. I bought it right away, and had fun building a palette of the Kansas sunset while my dogs ran through the woods. I know I could do the same thing just by taking a photo and extracting a palette later, but I really liked the experience of doing it in the moment.

Just one request: I'd love a way to export a bunch of colors at once. Is there a way in the current interface? If not, please consider it for a future update.

I don't use my iPad much these days, but when I did, I used nPlayer: a media playing app which got around many of the iOS restrictions. Plays many different formats, has its own integrated file manager, and provides ways to copy files directly including Windows file shares or streaming files

Protests also help in building awareness. In that regard, Occupy was a huge success. Overnight, people and mainstream media were suddenly talking about class.

Also, I think it planted the seed in a way. There were huge protests around the start of the Iraq War, but those failed in part because they were mostly ignored by the media. Occupy found a way to get the media to pay attention, and used social media outlets as a way to engage people whether or not they showed up in person. The Women's March probably would have been a success if Occupy hadn't occurred, but I think Occupy did a lot in terms of making people in the US think protesting was viable in terms of getting attention, and thus the Women's March, and all the following protests, had a leg up because of it.

Tahrir Square / Arab Spring should also get some credit too, since they created the framework Occupy followed.

Here's a quick link about the LGBT executive order and how it failed:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/ivanka-trump-jared-kus...

I can't prove it, but I suspect the rapid response of protesters played a factor in shelving the order, based on the large numbers who hit the streets and airports shortly after the immigration ban was announced. The LGBT EO would have produced an even larger response.

At any rate, if you haven't already looked at the Women's March or Indivisible's or Planned Parenthood's sites or Facebook pages, I highly recommend you do. I'm quite impressed and heartened at the ways they're keeping people engaged. Little daily actions that anyone can do such as calling your Senator. Turning the protest highs into concrete action.

I'd strongly disagree.

Occupy didn't result in direct action or changes. However, it popularized the notion of the One Percent vs. Ninety-Nine Percent, and got people to think about class in a nation very averse to even acknowledging the existence of economic classes. Probably had a positive impact in terms of helping Obama get re-elected, since Obama was lucky enough to get a seemingly clueless one-percenter as an opponent. Occupy had laid the groundwork which helped attacks against Romney.

The Trump protests have already had an effect. First of all, it's motivated normally non-politically active people into action. The sheer size of the crowds at the first protest, the Women's March, has had a galvanizing effect. People at the marches were encouraged to sign up to various groups. Those groups, like Indivisible or Planned Parenthood, keep things going by organizing at the local level and by giving them easy things to do each day or each week. There's a direct line between the protests and the fact almost every congressperson has an overwhelming volume of calls. And the seeds are planted not only for future protests but also for future direct action.

The administration has already backed down on some issues due to the protests. I think it's arguable the anti-LGBT executive order was scrapped at the last minute because of the sheer size of the instant protests over the immigration ban. If that many people would show up over an immigration order which didn't affect anyone they knew, then it would be reasonable to predict the streets would be absolutely flooded at any attempt to renew persecution of LGBT people.

As an added bonus, the protests are clearly unnerving Trump. I have no idea what the long term effect will be, but at the moment it's causing his team to make some errors.

The biggest part of the problem is not being able to turn it off. I don't think most people would be bothered by the basic telemetry if this was an option for non-enterprise / education users.

That and not being able to see what it's sending out. I recently took a close look at the Privacy control panel on my iPhone. Not only does it give the option of turning off telemetry and ad data, but it also shows you exactly what is being sent back to the mothership.

This is what Windows 10 needs.

Being an old Slashdot user, the first incredibly dumb thought of mine was "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" With a pic of Natalie Portman for the watch face, of course.

But, one fun thing I could imagine doing is using it as an incredibly portable PirateBox. Or any other use of a file server hiding in plain sight.

That's much too harsh. If someone is poor enough they can't afford internet access, then they're probably under some stress from all sorts of factors. Working two jobs, trying to keep their head above water, possibly a single parent, etc.

Having the kid bring the paper home can be a good reminder. Even my own quite devoted mother would occasionally forget it was grade time until I'd show her the report card.

I don't use Android currently, but when I did, PowerAmp was a great music player. Simple interface. Would automatically find sound files wherever you put them. Played most formats including flac. Worked very well with my BT headphones. Never had a problem with it.

I agree with you. HN should get rid of the downvotes. They don't really serve a useful purpose. It just adds needless friction and anxiety, puts a certain amount of negativity at the center of the discussion, and reinforces a certain level of groupthink. If someone's factually wrong, a response pointing out the errors is far more effective than a downvote, and encourages further discussion. If something is offensive, flag the comment and move on. Downvotes also encourage some pointless noise in the conversation involving the downvotes themselves.

I could see keeping the upvotes as a way of helping to keep things positive (pun probably intended), but I'm not attached to them.

For the same reason people freaked out about a very easily disabled Amazon search integration in Ubuntu. People had higher expectations of Microsoft (and Canonical) than Google. Plus, the desktop / laptop environment is one in which regular monitoring outside of the browser is something usually only done by malware.

Microsoft should have recognized they were considered more trustworthy, in one sector anyways, than Google or Facebook. Building on that trust by building a Windows 10 with great privacy would have helped their reputation and stemmed the bleeding a bit. At any rate, I have no idea why MS doesn't just allow a "disable all tracking and telemetry" option on all versions of the OS. Would kill most of the complaints immediately, and most people wouldn't bother opting out so Microsoft would still have the data they think they need.