Hacker News Reader

Relwalon A whole new world: Ars reviews the Galaxy Tab 10.1

How so vis-a-vis mobile Flash?

Relwalon A year on: Flash still not on the iPad, and that's still a good decision

I must echo the experience with Flash on the Xoom running 3.1. Performance is, finally, quite acceptable.

Relwalon A year on: Flash still not on the iPad, and that's still a good decision

Regarding 1) Flash on Android doesn't run in the background.

Relwalon Google blocks movie service on rooted Android devices

An app that is using android.drm will probably be looking for specific DRM plugins.

Relwalon Google blocks movie service on rooted Android devices

Here's what I believe is going on:

Honeycomb adds a framework to support DRM plugins. Android 3.1 adds an actual implementation of a DRM plugin called Widevine (acquired by Google in Dec. 2010). Android 3.1 also supports HDCP. The DRM plugin is technically not built into Android; it's a modular add-on. The interface to the DRM plugins is part of Android.

In order for DRM and HDCP to actually work the DRM system has to validate that the system can be trusted. (That's all that DRM does.) If the system is rooted, apparently the DRM system can not validly claim that the system can be trusted.

Google's YouTube Movie Rental service that's part of the Android Market on Android 3.1 apparently relies on the DRM system to validate that the system can be trusted. (This condition may have been part of the deal to get the movie studios to allow their content to be distributed and rented through the Android Market.) If the DRM framework reports that the system can not be trusted because the system has been rooted then the jig's up -- no movies.

Bottom line: you can't have a movie rental service that requires that the system be trustworthy and a possibly untrustworthy system that would result from the system being rooted. You can have one or the other -- not both.

Relwalon Skip Flash, Build Animations in HTML5 With Hype (YC W11)

I too was confused by their use of the name Hype and the awesome open source Hype Framework. Apparently there's no connection.

Relwalon Google And Amazon May Have Just Handed Apple The Keys To The Cloud Music Kingdom

It's quite premature to call this game.

No one has seen Apple's cloud music offering.

How locked up will it be? How much will it cost? Will it support MP3s not purchased from iTunes? Will it work on non-Apple-brand devices?

Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

Relwalon Android location service cache dumper.

Apple's consolidated.db is not a "mistake". A mistake would not have gotten rewritten for iOS 4 when the database got converted from XML to SQLite and moved to user data.

http://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/3-major-issues-...

Also iOS no longer uses Skyhook as of iOS 3.2. Plus Skyhook is for Wifi access point location data, not cell-tower location data. Apple uses its own database for that now which you consent to update with your location data. http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002145.html

Relwalon Report Finds Performance of Web Apps Throttled on iOS Devices

This seems like a mighty convenient "bug" given that HTML frameworks like jQuerry Mobile are just starting to be able to deliver a native-app-like user experience.

Relwalon Developers: Why You May Not Want To Listen To Robert Scoble

IF they put you into a featured listing! First you have to figure out who to sleep with on the App Store team.

Relwalon Developers: Why You May Not Want To Listen To Robert Scoble

If I was head of Windows Phone 7 Developer Relations I wouldn't be writing public blogs critical of Scoble's evangelizing Android development.

People might misinterpret my motivations.