Teckla

I disagree.

My wife's iMac is 6 1/2 years old, and still gets the latest OS updates (for free!), though we're upgrading to a new iMac soon.

My iPad 2 is almost 5 years old, and still gets the latest OS updates (for free!), though we're upgrading to a new iPad soon.

It is precisely because our older Apple hardware is still working well, and Apple still supports us with the latest updates to that older hardware, that my family is not only sticking with Apple, but we've recently invested in new iPhones.

Apple has earned our trust.

The inverse-square law makes this a non-concern, doesn't it?

A friend of mine that works at Google -- and received a free Nexus 5x for Christmas -- told me the n5x is a pretty lousy phone.

I Googled around, and sure enough, it looks like a lemon.

And twice the RAM (1 GB iPhone 6 vs. 2 GB iPhone 6s) and a faster CPU and other goodies.

I agree. "Vanilla" Minetest needs monsters, villages, villagers, fortresses, more ores, more items, etc. in order to compete with "vanilla" Minecraft.

It's so very close to being a Minecraft killer...but there seems to be strong resistance to adding more to the base game.

Unfortunately, right now, every query about vanilla Minetest being a little "barren" results in replies like, "Install some mods." sigh

Some of them leave a disaster in their wake. They're fast because they're sloppy, and don't take the time to refactor their new code into something maintainable. The team pays the price for that later.

I'm not suggesting John Carmack is one of those bad 10x developers, but they do exist. Just something to keep in mind.

Once in a while, I catch myself making some kind of mistake on the road that angers another driver.

I really wish there was some kind of international, "Sorry, my bad!" gesture. If there is one, I'm unaware of what it is.

Didn't the court in the recent Oracle vs. Google case recently decide that you can, indeed, copyright APIs?

My understanding, which may be incorrect, is that Sun intended for their JVM to be the reference version, and they envisioned a lot of companies creating their own competing (but compatible) JVMs.

I don't recall any hints or suggestions "copying" the Java API would be a problem. I believe Sun planned on making money by charging for Java implementations to be tested against the TCK in order to earn the Java label.

On my Windows 10 machine, the "recommendations" were enabled by default. And they sure look/behave like advertisements to me.

I really hate seeing this "blame the victim" mentality.

People here on Hackers News might be prepared to seek and deploy alternative start menus, but for many, perhaps most, non-technical users, it's a difficult and scary prospect.

Not to mention the iPad.

The original iPad came out over 5 years ago with 16 GB of storage. Entry level iPads still have 16 GB of storage.

Given that iOS has gotten bigger and retina iPads made a lot of apps bigger, entry level iPad storage has actually regressed considerably.

Pretty confusing, given that flash prices have gone down considerably in 5 years.

I guess you don't bank $200 billion by being generous to your customers.

I told him I'm not sure I'd ever fit into the Go community because the Go community seems to like variable names that are extremely short. For example:

  func (h Handler) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request)

Perhaps my brain works different, but I find variable names that are actual words much easier to read.

This really bummed me out because I was evaluating it before sending Google my money, but I have concerns about the quality of their client. Apparently this has been a problem for years.

Is a backup really a backup if it's onsite? You don't want a fire to take out your PC and external disk located in the same house.

Game companies don't "copy and paste" old versions of games to jump start the development on new versions of games? cp doom1.c doom2.c

You do realize that in many, many countries, you can buy antibiotics over the counter, right? Nearby countries like Mexico, and far away countries like India (with a huge population)? And that people are buying them and using them constantly?

Sure, there's the risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria developing, but the U.S. isn't going to stop that from happening no matter how difficult they make it for people to buy and use the drugs they need.

I'm starting to lose patience with people trying to take away the right of other people to control their own body.

And it's not just antibiotics. Things like prescription drugs being essentially purposefully laced with poison (acetaminophen) to prevent people from "abusing" them and other drugs like cannabis being illegal is utterly ridiculous.

If we don't own our own bodies, what do we get to own?

I'd love a Java AOT compiler that produces native binaries with no additional dependencies. (I'd even be okay if, as a side effect, some Java features were not supported, making it technically not-Java.)

For small tools and utilities, the JVM requirement is quite onerous, especially when one does not know if the end user has Java installed, or if they do, what version.

Alas, the company I work for will not budget for a Java AOT compiler, and for my hobby programming, the commercial Java AOT compilers are far too expensive to justify.

I'll just keep hoping a good and free (or inexpensive) Java AOT compiler becomes available some day. I would even donate money and/or code if a serious project started.

Slashdot's audio ads don't wait 10 minutes to start. Slashdot's much hated auto-refresh "feature" is to blame.

It periodically refreshes the page and brings you a new crop of ads, some of which might be audio ads.

The auto-refresh "feature" merely exists to increase their ad revenue. Nobody I know likes the auto-refresh feature, as it just causes you to lose your place on the page.

Slashdot's auto-refresh, which can't be disabled without some technical tinkering, is horrible, just horrible. I've left feedback that they should include an option to disable auto-refresh, but was ignored. I guess it's more profitable to ignore your users and force more ads on them.

I installed Adblock Plus and tweaked some Chrome settings to get the system to mostly ignore Slashdot's horrible auto-refresh. It still sometimes scrolls my page a bit, though, which is still annoying.

Java AOT compilers? What Java AOT compilers?

I know about Excelsior JET ($$$$) and gcj (abandoned). Do you know of any free and good Java AOT compilers?

Unfortunately, it's also extremely expensive. That's not to say it isn't worth every penny in some situations, but I've gotten kind of spoiled by free development tools for personal projects. I'm glad the days of spending hundreds of dollars for things like C compilers are long behind me.

I agree that a really good AOT JVM would be very nice. It doesn't necessarily imply better performance however.

For some application domains, I would be happy to trade speed -- and even features -- for the ability to create a native binary with no dependencies.

This is one area where I find the Go programming language interesting. I prefer Java, but the lack of a good and free ahead-of-time compiler for Java that creates native binaries with no additional dependencies is a killer feature for some situations.

In many ways, it feels like the Firefox team is mostly fighting a battle of perceptions. Ask anybody why they don’t use Firefox and they’ll say: “It’s too slow.” That’s not actually the case anymore.

I'm sorry, but this is just not true. Firefox's UI often goes (Not Responding) for me, while Chrome's UI is always responsive.

Do you know of any good and free ahead-of-time Java compilers that produce native binaries without any additional dependencies?

I haven't been able to find any, but perhaps my Google-fu is weak. gcj is obviously not a good answer.

gcj has been abandoned. It was last updated over 5 years ago. It's not clear to me why you would even mention it.

I'm a software developer that primarily uses and likes Java, and the lack of a good and free ahead-of-time compiler for Java that produces native binaries is what I miss most in the Java ecosystem.