lucid00

I'm not sure I'd put "doesn't generate enough energy" in the failure category.

It's a road. It normally doesn't generate energy anyway.

Anything here is a plus, especially when it comes to research.

They just have to take what they've learned from this and apply it to the next attempt.

And from the sounds of it, the only thing they have to really focus on is ensure the next one lasts long enough to pay for its own construction.

Solar sidewalks might be a better idea.

What kind of help is needed?

Also is there any chance of switching to Janea Systems' NodeJS builds so that we get 32-bit and x86 Android support?

http://www.janeasystems.com/blog/announcing-node-js-mobile-a...

I'm unsure if Smartcards classify as NFC, but there's also WebNFC.

https://w3c.github.io/web-nfc/

Seriously though, wired connections are out. Bluetooth is the thing.

...and that's why we have Web Bluetooth, which is already in the Chrome Dev Channel.

https://webbluetoothcg.github.io/web-bluetooth/

To say that "normal clients don't really matter" simply because WebTorrent can enable new use cases for BitTorrent (that haven't shown any significant traction) really seems like you're missing the proverbial forest for the trees.

I already said "the forest" doesn't matter.

Seriously, if I were building something with WebTorrent. Let's say Netflix (Note: https://torrentfreak.com/webtorrent-brings-bittorrent-to-the...). And most of the existing BitTorrent seeds are pirated content.

Why would I care?

"there's no guarantee that any of them will ever reach critical mass in terms of adoption"

When you give away tool with a widespread guaranteed userbase like this, someone is bound to build something that people will use. Not to say WebTorrent will be this big, but that's how the internet came to be.

And this is a completely decentralized upload and download library for the web, someone's going to build something popular with it I'm sure and it's not even at version 1.0 yet.

That and they wouldn't get classic BitTorrent compatibility in a web app.

"If this what you wrote was true then you would see big adoption of webtorrent which is not the case."

You're missing the point.

Think of it this way.

Check out this video: https://fastcast.nz/videos/cityscape-chicago-ii.html

Once you're done viewing even a second of it, just know you've just adopted WebTorrent.

You don't even need to know WebTorrent exists or was used and BitTorrent wasn't needed in any way.

"That's a pretty big hurdle considering most regular torrent users don't even realize WebTorrent exists"

They don't need to. That's the point.

If I send a user to https://file.pizza/ to transfer a file to them. Not once to I have to mention that it uses WebTorrent. IMO that's the killer feature.

I know you can't connect to normal clients. My point is normal clients don't really matter.

"Which means that you do not have almost any sources of seeders"

All it takes for someone to seed a file is to open a web page. Think about it.

At any point if I wanted to promote a song via WebTorrent, I could build WebTorrent into an audio player and encourage my user base to click a checkbox and seed the track (toss in IndexedDB support for storing it offline and it's even better).

Complete serverless resharing with almost every benefit of BitTorrent to boot.

The only thing WebTorrent needs the existing BitTorrent install base for is the existing torrents, which don't matter as much as you might think they do (most torrents are pirated content anyways).

So yes, WebRTC adoption does matter.

I feel this is a moot point.

I'm pretty sure the install base of WebRTC data channels is far higher than BitTorrent (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and soon Edge and Safari), so existing Torrent clients providing support only helps out the existing torrents out there.

Down the line I'm willing to bet that WebTorrent grows to be more widely used than BitTorrent, just off of the lack of friction to get started for both users and developers.

The "Safari is the new IE" article was about them being slow to adopt APIs and the yearly release cycle attached to OS updates.

This is about visuals and UI based APIs that can be polyfilled. They matter but not as much as stuff like WebRTC and Service Workers IMO.

Google can fix these problems with updates and polyfills. Apple can't do that. Some iOS and Mac OS users will at some point be left out.

Nothing in this article matter that much "position:sticky, no backdrop-filter, no scroll-snap-type, gradients" they're useful, but not critical.

Doubt we'll see apps that aren't possible without these. They just make the experience nicer, they don't make products happen though.

Meanwhile on the Chrome end we've got web apps like Emojoy (https://jakearchibald-gcm.appspot.com/), Offline Wikipedia (https://wiki-offline.jakearchibald.com/), Instant.io (https://instant.io/), PeerCloud (https://peercloud.io/) and even Facebook (http://Facebook.com/) all providing features and services in Chrome (WebRTC, Service Workers, Background Sync) that can't be polyfilled or will have to provide a far lesser experience in Safari because it lacks even a way to polyfill these features (only things I can think of are AppCache and WebSockets which don't get the job done for these services).

To be honest, this isn't true.

Chrome Packaged Apps allow developers to build alternative browsers using Native Client.

Just no one has bothered to do so because it wouldn't make much of an impact, plus alternate browsers wouldn't be able to set themselves as the default browser.

YouTube's rules have something against not displaying the video.

This will need to be updated to display the video to stay up.

It is.

But it's not in certain contexts. Like in areas where a basic understanding of technology apply like on a tech blog or high profile position in politics or company where you make decisions that steer the tech sector, you'll do best with some basic programming knowledge.

Nothing serious is needed either, just a few weeks of learning Python and just read up on the rest of the programming world and you should at least have some understanding on how everything works.

Because I see more and more people in areas where programming knowledge can apply say "It's okay to not learn how to code" and people where it doesn't apply never go out of their way to say that.

Knowing how to code isn't always about getting a great job, sometimes it's just about making yourself better at your existing one.

It supports ORTC which is sort of like WebRTC 1.5

It's backwards compatible with WebRTC so it'll work with Chrome and Firefox, but it gives you more control of the protocols so you could build something that doesn't rely on SDP.

I doubt Edge will do this only because of one feature I was surprised to see Microsoft add support for... ASM.js.

ASM.js lets supporting browsers run optimized JavaScript code at near native speed and is backwards compatible with all browsers (just running the code slower).

With ASM.js Microsoft could bring .NET to all browsers without even needing to update the browsers themselves (just running faster when in a browser that supports ASM.js).

So far only Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox support it, I'm waiting for Google Chrome to jump on the bandwagon honestly as it's genius.

Also if you want an idea of how powerful it is, it helped Mozilla run the Unreal 4 Engine in Firefox at 1080p in 60FPS without lag.

IndexedDB support is horrible across all browsers. You'd be surprised at how much of the spec Chrome doesn't support.

I'm convinced it's because he wasn't a developer himself. He chanted "developers" but never seemed to push for anything developers wanted.

The moment Silverlight was announced, I was waiting for Microsoft to take on a cross-platform apps strategy crossing desktops/laptops, phones and Xbox (all platforms Silverlight was on).

Looking into the SDKs and other info showed that each of these platforms were running a different build of Silverlight entirely, sporting separate APIs for the same features.

Then Microsoft announced Windows 8, only for me to find that it doesn't run Windows Phone 7 apps.

So they then later announce Windows Phone 8 which sports some of the API stack of Windows 8 but ultimately didn't run Windows 8 apps.

Then they later release Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 which for the first time ran the same apps! But still sported drastically different features, execution of the same features and even separate app stores (though Microsoft made up for this by letting devs link one purchase to both stores).

And then there's Xbox One, which runs Windows 8 but sports a separate API stack and a separate store.

I'm not sure if Nadella is the reason why, but the moment he stepped in we get Windows 10 for desktops/laptops, phones/tablets, Xbox One and more all sporting one unified app store and API stack, something I wanted to see Microsoft do since 2007 and I know I'm not alone in having wanted these things.

Ballmer was clueless on the developer front.

If he focused on developers the way he should've from the beginning, the Zune could've even survived. It sounds silly, but the Zune was a pre-iPhone device running an offshoot of Windows Mobile with Wi-Fi. How Microsoft didn't push to put a browser, apps and Xbox Live games on these things I can't comprehend. Even if it wouldn't be the best experience, it would be an experience that largely didn't exist yet at the time.

You my friend have no idea what a bad argument is.

So control for IQ. Lets say we did. Sadly the statistics already say that a poor white person is more likely to "climb up from poverty" than a poor black person.

See the problem with your argument is that you somehow think that IQ is a factor here.

Lets say there are 10 job openings, and 3 of those jobs are run by people who are secretly prejudiced against black people and will come up with some excuse to not hire them.

That means for a white person there are 10 job openings and for a black person there are only 7, regardless of IQ.

So a white person and a black person with equal IQ do not have an equal situation in a country where the supremacy is white (even outside of racism and the like, there is always cultural bias which applies here).

"The new windows is so much better in fact that there's no longer any reason to buy anti-virus and anti-malware software to deal with its defects."

That's Windows 8.

All web devs and Android app devs need now is an API for an app to dynamically add icons to the app drawer, so that web apps can be added to the app drawer via Google Chrome.

The permissions for this will have to be on an app by app basis, since I'm sure this is a feature that'd be ripe for abuse.

They do.

https://developer.chrome.com/native-client/overview

I wouldn't call people that torrent shows and movies, pirate copies of Photoshop and play 3D-intensive games on Steam "non-technical users".

That's clearly not the target audience.

Chrome OS tracks what you do as much as Chrome does, which isn't as much as it's hyped up to be and is optional.

Plus Windows 8 somewhat does the same thing (built in Microsoft accounts, OneDrive integration, bookmark syncing, crash reporting, etc...).

Cue the "Google gets more information on you" comments.

yes

Moving from XAP to APPX will be the most important part of this update.

aka "Progressive Enhancement"

Articles like this make me realize how much people barely know what's going on in Android.

The ability to change homescreens existed for years now, I think the API was even in Android 1.0 (I can guarantee it's in 1.6 at least).

The only thing 4.4 could do to clean up the experience is allow Android apps to theme the UI elements in the settings app, notification bar, face buttons, and apps that use Holo.

But if content providers refuse to not use DRM anyways, won't Haiku users still lose out regardless?

If you can't use HTML5 DRM with Netflix your other options are either Silver light or a native app and Haiku has neither.

I'd say HTML5 DRM is the far lesser evil in this case.