HN user

bitmapbrother

1,328 karma
Posts5
Comments1,704
View on HN

Four days after the Jan. 6 insurrection

It's comedic how these far left wing publications continue to call it an "insurrection" when there were no weapons used and the only person killed was a woman that was assassinated by a trigger happy mall cop whose identity has still not been revealed.

Qualcomm is only able to obstruct in this way because Linux doesn’t keep the kernel driver ABI stable for any fixed period of time.

The Linux kernel used by Android is based on the LTS version that now has 6 years of support [1]. So by the time an OEM releases a new device the support window will be about 4 years. Google has also been working to stabilize the Android kernel HAL so that OS updates don't require a brand new kernel [2]. Because of these developments Android devices can now offer 4 years of support [3].

Windows Phone 10 was actually in a position to support phones for years and even got Qualcomm onboard. It’s a shame the platform was never competitive, and they’d burned all their goodwill on the 7 and 8 fiascos.

This is pure speculation and I highly doubt Qualcomm would have invested the time and money, to support a platform that had no chance of success, beyond their obligated 2 years of support at the time.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-users-rejoic...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-outlines-plan...

[3] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/treble-plu...

I would say Unreal is the biggest game engine in terms of pervasiveness. Also, isn't C# just used as a scripting language in Unity? All of the heavy lifting is dome by the C/C++ backend.

After reaching that initial 10ms goal, we re-aimed and set our target on something more ambitious. Namely that a GC pause should never be longer than 1ms. Starting with JDK 16, I’m happy to report that we’ve reached that goal too. ZGC now has O(1) pause times. In other words, they execute in constant time and do not increase with the heap, live-set, or root-set size (or anything else for that matter). Of course, we’re still at the mercy of the operating system scheduler to give GC threads CPU time. But as long as your system isn’t heavily over-provisioned, you can expect to see average GC pause times of around 0.05ms (50 µs) and max pause times of around 0.5ms (500 µs).

Very impressive and well done. Should Azul be worried?

Isn't reference counting a form of garbage collection, though? If you want performance then Objective C and Swift aren't the languages you should be using. There's a reason why Apple recommends C/C++ if you need your code to run as fast as possible and also the reason why the high majority of professional games are written in C++ with either a thin Objective C / Swift wrapper.

Also, you can compile both Java and Kotlin to native images with Graal.

https://www.graalvm.org/examples/java-kotlin-aot/

Perhaps you should read the article in full. It clearly says the most popular Android smartphones in 2021 are:

Samsung

Redmi

Oppo

Huawei

Vivo

Which probably account for the majority of Android smartphone sales.

I'm sure services I use run on all of the major cloud providers, but if that page was supposed to be enlightening, I only recognized one brand from the first page of customers.

So the first page was supposed to be indicative of all of the popular consumer facing services they host? Here, let me help you out: Spotify, eBay, Twitter, Apple iCloud, Verizon, Vimeo, Netflix, etc

I refreshed a couple times, and sure, I saw more (on average 1 or 2) that I recognized on each page. But I don't think your response is particularly persuasive. Are you suggesting that the services that I use that run on AWS are in fact, not services I actually use?

What popular consumer services were on AWS again?

Edit: Do you hold any Alphabet/Google stock? I've noticed your comment history trends toward dismissing criticism of Google, praising their products, and taking opportunities to speak about the flaws of their top competitors.

Do you own Microsoft stock? Because quote a few of your posts seem to praise their products and services. Do you work for them?

How is dart superior to TS? This is so uninformed.

Speaking of uninformed...Dart is significantly faster for one. It's also not encumbered by being a superset to one of the worst scripting languages ever designed and, thus, does not have to deal with all of the baggage JavaScript brings with it.

Dart is very poorly designed.

Amusing when you consider the clusterfuck that is JavaScript.

It would seem that you're the one missing the point. Microsoft was the very first company to sign up with the NSA way back in 2007. So when it comes to the mass collection of user data and spying - Microsoft is a pioneer in the field.

What are you talking about? If you're a Windows user you're already in the privacy armageddon. And if the telemetry, which by the way can't be turned off, wasn't bad enough they're also operating a search engine and ad business that tracks people. And let's not forget that they also do a lot of business in China so they're also sharing their users data with the government. Microsoft has you covered with the anti-privacy trifecta.

As for the Windows 10 telemetry, during a Windows 10 install these are all of the things that are turned on by default.

Personalization

1. Personalize your speech, inkling input and typing by sending contacts and calendar details, along with other associated input data to Microsoft.

2. Send typing and input data to Microsoft to improve the recognition and suggestion platform.

3. Let apps use your advertising ID for experience across apps.

4. Let Skype (if installed) help you connect with friends in your address book and verify your mobile number. SMS and data charges may apply.

Location

1. Turn on Find My Device and let Windows and apps request your location, including location history and send Microsoft and trusted partners location data to improve location services.

Connectivity and error reporting

1. Automatically connect to suggested open hotspots. Not all networks are secure.

2. Automatically connect to networks shared by your contacts.

3. Automatically connect to hotspots temporarily to see if paid Wi-Fi services are available.

4. Send full error and diagnostic information to Microsoft.

Browser, protection, and update

1. User SmartScreen online services to help protect against malicious content and downloads in sites loaded by Windows browsers and Store apps.

2. User page prediction to improve reading, speed up browsing, and make your overall experience better in Windows browsers. Your browsing data will be sent to Microsoft.

3. Get updates from and send update to others PCs on the Internet to speed up app and Windows update downloads.

They've plateaud while sticking to their values.

They earned 6 billion more in Q2 2018 than they did in Q2 2017. Like I said, to suggest they've plateaued while sticking to their values is ridiculous.

Alphabet reported revenue of $26.24 billion after accounting for traffic-acquisition costs, up from $20.91 billion in the second quarter of 2017 and higher than the average analyst estimate of $25.58 billion.

In the event you don't like the new gesture based navigation system you can always revert back to the traditional Back, Home, and Recents layout in settings.

Aside from the unnecessary jargon, this irks me how it portrays the user as some passive consumer. It really drives home how Google is, first and foremost, an advertising company.

It's amusing that you're taking a quote from the Android Developer blog (a blog, you know, for developers) and trying to misconstrue it as a public facing comment for users.

Here's their public facing comment that is aimed at users:

Android 9 also helps you get things done faster with App Actions, which predicts what you’ll want to do next based on your context and displays that action right on your phone. Say it’s Tuesday morning and you’re preparing for your commute: you’ll be suggested actions like navigating to work on Google Maps or resuming an audiobook with Google Play Books. And when you put in headphones after work, you may see options to call your mom or start your favorite Spotify playlist.

https://www.blog.google/products/android/introducing-android...

That solution is some time away. In the near term, I'd like to see the commercial aircraft engine OEM's start transmitting in flight GPS coordinates of their engines so that they can be tracked in real time. These engines currently transmit engine telemetry back to their OEM's so they can monitor their performance and condition, but I'm not sure of the time frequency it transmits the data back to the monitoring facility. In the case of Flight MH370, the Rolls Royce engines were transmitting engine telemetry, but it didn't contain the necessary information to be able to track its flight path and precisely determine where it ended up.

Java's Magic Sauce 8 years ago

Not surprisingly, c# has succeeded where Java has failed in being cross platform, used for instance in game development with the unity engine

C# succeeded in game development? That's its claim to fame? Being an optional scripting language used by Unity? The real work is done by the graphics engine that's written in C++.

or multi platform mobile development via xamarin

Last time I checked the percentage of apps on the App Store and Google Play that were written with Xamarin tools were so low that they barely even registered.

Microsoft and their partners do sell millions of tablets per year, it's just that their unit sales pale in comparison to Android and iOS tablets. I'm also not even sure if Microsoft calls their Surface line tablets anymore. Their product page now calls them laptops which is odd considering you sort of need the optional keyboard to be a laptop.

So I wonder where they are being bought from, is everyone getting them from Amazon?!

Amazon accounts for good percentage of tablets sold. I bought an Amazon Fire 8 HD for $49 during Prime Day. At that price it's an instant purchase.

Not really, they are winning the desktop and tablets (2-1) war.

According to tablet market share stats they are clearly not winning that war and not even a serious competitor.

Likewise, Android tablets aren't that good, with most of the apps being phone apps.

Most of the Android apps I use on tablets all resize fine to use the extra space. I consider trying to use desktop apps that are not optimized for a touch interface a much worse experience.