3,730 karma · joined July 26, 2011
Also, generally speaking, the way Safari implements this means that the extension passes on the block list to the browser and Safari itself implements the blocking. This means,
1. It is more private since the extension does not have access to your webpage. 2. It is faster because Safari can do it natively and it is not done in JavaScript.
I have contacted their support for Google Express before. It was because a delivery did not show up. Turns out I had selected the following day as the delivery day. Happy the mystery was solved (user error) I thank them. I get an email a few minutes later with a $5 credit for the confusion.
Another time I ordered a Space Pen with a clip. I got one that was without a clip. I contacted them and they said the one with the clip was no longer in stock. They refunded my money and let me keep the pen. Never asked for the refund.
> Google has notoriously awful customer support.
Yeah, I too read that somewhere on Hacker News.
The other big issue with their 2FA authentication is that it really isn't two factor. You can say you don't have the token and instead can answer security questions. Two factor is supposed to be something you know plus something you have. "Falling back" to security questions is basically just relying on things you know.
The big feature I want is I want a way to see what I've already read. I think this is the first app (other than mine) that I know does this.
Haven't played around long but I like you can collapse and expand comments. Is there a way to default them all to be expanded?
EDIT: You need a way to refresh comments.
@Replies: I'm glad you guys like it. Looks like I'll renew my Developer Program membership then. It's due in less than a week.
Orignal link: http://gigaom.com/2013/08/28/hangouts-hd-vp8-webrtc/
*I've no idea what WebObjects are but I've heard people poke fun at their mention. Would be interesting if someone had more details to share.
Side Note: If you are looking to install Command Line Tools and seem to be unable to install Xcode from the App Store. You can go to Xcode > Preference and install it. Screen shot from a couple of minutes ago: http://i.imgur.com/KEhjkE3.png
> "I would wager that within two years..."
> "My opinion is that Apple is about to get hammered..."
From elsewhere on this post:
> "Android is going to take 85%+ of the global smart phone market..."
> "The iPhone's market share will stop growing this year..."
> "I don't think it will hold up..."
I like that you are so confident about the future and I'm quite interested to know how you make these predictions?
(If you really really really care about a user's choice like you say you do then make the user make a choice. On first launch get the user's choice and refuse to work without being told what they'd prefer.)
Edit 1: I read the W3 draft on Do Not Track and seems like there is a section for "Explicit Consent Requirement".[0] Although whether the committee is influenced by corporation in way that the industry is tasked with policing itself is a different topic altogether.
Edit 2: Brain Smith from Mozilla responded with websites ignoring the flag if set by default. That's what Yahoo! did.[1] But that's the problem with any honor-based system.
[0] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-tracking/2012Jun/... [1] http://allthingsd.com/20121026/yahoo-dings-do-not-track-defa...
@OP: I've flagged your comment. Hoping you or a moderator sees that you accidentally posted from your not-throwaway account. I could figure out what startup you are a founder of.
Exactly! Shows you how much it has recognized as you speak. Immediate feedback. More important is the speed of getting back results. Google Now is certainly a little faster in that regard as well.
Reminded me of a 21 questions test with Siri and Google Now (on a Nexus with Android 4.1 I think) side by side as they listened simultaneously. It's interesting to see how both perform in different scenarios. Generally when Google search has the answer Google Now is a little faster. When Google search doesn't have a direct answer Google Now boils down to Google Search results - right there - as opposed to an offer to do a web search. In my experience Siri tends to have an answer more often.
The general theme was:
1. Questions that get answered by Wolfram Alpha were slower on Siri. In one test Wolfram Alpha didn't have an answer and Siri offered a web search where as Google's graph did have an answer.
2. For requests like "Call BestBuy" Siri looked up BestBuy stores and offered you the choice of which one to call where as Google Now said there were no numbers for BestBuy in the phonebook.
3. Sports questions (which I don't quite care about personally, sorry) tend to be answered way better by Siri. I remember a question about which sports personalities was taller and Siri had an direct answer with other stats whereas Google Now was a list of search result links - no ads yet. It was the same thing for another sports trivia question.
4. Siri would sometimes have to wait - almost like a timeout - on a response from Apple. Google Now didn't face such issues.
5. In some case Siri would take a little longer but give back more information - when you talk about restaurants it'll include reviews, price range and distance.
Source: http://youtu.be/z_pclCFpjgw (video)
Your theme throughout had been that there's variance in India. Of course! With any big country you would expect good amount of variance. I couldn't help but point out that although there is variance whatever the orignal blog post said was a very good reflection of the meidan. By citing the high variance you are making it sound like the OP has only seen the bad parts of India. That's not true. The OP has a very gentle (yes!) summarization of the median. That's how life is in India.
LONGER POINT-BY-POINT REPLY
> One thing that I do want to mention is that India is a very high variance country. For almost any statement one makes, there will be a un-ignorable part of the country where the statement is not true. To get a truer picture of India, always keep that in mind.
It is very high variance indeed. But for every mile of good road there are millions of miles of crappy road. Variance yes. But the median is pretty sucky.
> Depending on the time you choose to travel, your impression of Mumbai's city train system can be poles apart.
How is it different? During rush hours it's unsafe, super-over-crowded, uncomfortable, dirty, etc. When it isn't rush hour it is not super-over-crowded yes. But it still is unsafe (no closing doors, etc.), uncomfortable (plank seats which broken planks, etc.), dirty (very very dirty), etc.
> On the other hand visit Chennai, Mumbai, Pune (by no means an exhaustive list) nobody will give it a second thought if an unattended girl has to travel in the wee hours of the night, even if wearing a mini fortune in jewelery.
Well, I can talk about Mumbai, and I disagree that nobody will give a second thought. But girls being out late (around until 11:00 PM) alone ("unattended") in Mumbai is not that bad because the city is still busy and crowded. In Gujarat things are much safer. But we used to still accompany our female friends back home.
> In certain regions of India, you will find bribes to be business as usual. In the south, (barring Karnataka) that is certainly not the norm.
I have no first hand experience but that's very very hard to believe. Especially given how elections are conducted. Whenever there's an election in Tamil Nadu (of which Chennai is the capital) you free television sets being given out by the ruling part to votes who vote for them. Fairly educated people working in other parts of India like Mumbai would go back home to get their free TVs. Ton of universities are owned and operated by current or former politicians in South India. Admission criteria is how much money can a student's family "donate".
> Some cities are poster-children of bad traffic, some are pretty decent compared to Indian average.
That's just saying some are very horrible while other are not as bad (Indian average) but still not comparable to anywhere else on the planet?
> In some cities the form of the garbage disposal is that you throw it on the street, whereas in others you will have regular system that collects it off the dumpsters and empties it on the landfills.
I think all cities have a regular system that collects garbage and uses landfills. But these garbage collectors don't collect all the garbage and there's 10x fallen on the sides, overflown and just laying there around such dumpsters. They'll collect a bag or two that is inside the dumpster AND easy to grab. I agree there would be certain parts (and again, these exists; variance; but are in minority, very small minority; median) that are decently run. But would love to hear about examples of cities where you could say the city is clean and is cleaned.
> In the northern and western states girl child foeticide is rampant, not so in the other states.
Only two states have more females than males (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_and_territories_r...). Since females are expected to live 3 years longer than males in India (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...) all states should have more women than men. Just because Tamil Nadu (say) has 995 females per male doesn't mean that's going very well. In fact, it's still pretty bad. Maybe not as bad as other states but is no way justifiable. Lastly, variance, yes. Median, still horrible.
> Lastly: Corruption is practiced differently in India and US. In US there is this revolving door between corporations and the govt that legitimizes corruption, whereas in India it is closer to cash under the table. Not claiming that one is better or worse than the other, just making an observation about how it is practiced.
If a cop stops me for not having a driver's license, not wearing a helmet on a two-wheeler, talking on the phone, etc. I pay the cop Rs. 50 instead of the Rs. 100 fine and not ask for the receipt. Job done. If in Mumbai I apply for a passport and that calls for police verification of address you have to actually go to the police station (they don't come to you) and bribe(?) them with Rs. 100 to do their job. They never verified your address and if you didn't pay up they would report that you don't live at your place. I could go on and on with this but essentially this is how the country is run. If you are saying that's the same as US then I don't know what to say.
That only means American culture is more exported than others in many forms like movies, TV shows, etc. People like to watch American shows, American that, American this, etc. If Honk Kong and Seoul were able to export their culture as effectively you'll know about them too. A lot of people know about Paris and Cannes in the US. Doesn't mean they are "well educated" or anything. Nor the other way around.
That's something as an outsider living here in since around last December I've noticed. Your government is quite broken. But it somehow still works. (Paradox, I know!) For instance, the healthcare bill that was recently passed largely solves the textbook problem of information asymmetry in the health insurance market. It almost didn't pass, but it did. Same seems about the immigration laws - although they are yet to be "fixed". It's a country where, ironically, a "professional news organization" like Fox News exists at the same time with with a "comedy" show like the Colbert Report.
> Unless something major changes, the American focus on consumption will eventually erode our influence around the globe.
That's a quote from the original article. I don't quite see how consumption is wrong. Especially, since from what I see, consumption here in the US is based on the idea of buying things that solve problems. That give people the incentive to invent tools to solve problems. Trust me there are a lot of countries where they don't like to spend money at all (consume). There are everyday problems there that aren't solved because tools invented for them will not be bought. Your quality of life is stagnant if "buy only bare minimum" is the model you want to follow.
He likes the rich quality of apps (Reeder the first RSS reader he likes, Day One, etc.) and he is obviously carrying it around.. A LOT. And notice the way he's using it, like while sipping coffee, while exercising, etc. I don't know about you but I would rather have a tablet than carry a laptop (even a 11 inch MacBook Air, that's super light, small, and if you only put it to sleep no boot time) all over the place. We are not even talking about the apps (both in terms of quality of apps and the variety) that make things much easier and pleasant. You could more efficiently (by some measures) and more cheaply do all of what he does WITHOUT ANY COMPUTING DEVICE. But is that the point?
> haven't replaced any devices... and the tablet isn't good enough on its own
Did your cellphone replace your landline? Did your computer replace your calculator?
> the tablet is a luxury
Pretty much everything in the First World is a luxury. Visit Africa and you'll realize that. Visit the poor streets of India and you'll realize that. Anything that's beyond your basic needs is by definition luxury.
Don't like to copy-paste but in one of my other comments I wrote: ... Debate about models such as free public healthcare, compulsory insurance, compulsory insurance where the government pays the difference that the less wealthy can't make up for, etc... (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4124317)
But without the incentive to invest in the huge cost involved with discovering drugs, you will have nothing to look at the other side, glass or no glass.
"In 1972, India made only the process for making drugs patentable, not the drugs themselves."
Do you really think this is smart?
Heavy R&D costs are involved in coming up with compounds that save lives. If you only have the manufacturing process that's patentable then what happens is you can "reverse engineer" drugs as the article says. I would thought the significant majority of R&D costs is pertained to identifying compounds that cure. The cost of determining the process to manufacture these discoveries was less significant.
cost to invent drugs = identifying compounds (90%, say) + determining manufacturing process (10%)
I've lost family members to cancer and I would like my country's legislature to NOT disincentivize research for cancer or any other area. I'm not sure if there have been significant medical inventions here. I tried to look but couldn't find any.
[1] You competitors will spend 10% of the cost to determine a different process to manufacture drugs and sell the compounds at tenth of your price and taking the market away from you.
Edit: Down vote? Is it because of the dissent or is it because you think I'm wrong? I'm an Indian citizen and have the right (luckily) to dissent. If you think I'm wrong I would love to know what inventions have Cipla et. al been credited with.
[1] If the patent system is good/evil/broken/whatever is a separate argument. And if the patent system is the problem you fix the patent system, not something else that isn't related to it.
Edit:
Key steps in writing that comparison table:
1. Whatever iOS 6 has and ICS does not, list it to be on ICS via third party.
2. Don't do third party additions on the iOS 6 column as if there are no third party apps on that platform.
Might as well say, "Android is open-source and since the phones are Turing machines Android does everything ever possible by a computer through third-party support. Maybe it's a painful experience but it does do it." More than that, I'm tired of looking at such comparisons that boil down features to bullet points. Imagine BlackBerry running the following ad after the announcement of the iPhone in 2007:
BlackBerry already offers more that what is coming in the iPhone.
Open websites, send messages, make phone calls, read your email.
But thanks for the link.
EDIT: As other's have pointed out, you need to be using Safari. I can confirm I can watch it when I open it up there.
Maintainable food items.
"Also, the cook should be able to test these modular food items to ensure they are bug free."
As an example, take Google's self-driving cars. Would you say the meat of their body of work theoretical? But would say the code they (Sebastian Thrun himself, and others involved in the project) write code that's not very practical, readable, maintainable or without tests? I would say what they do is theoretical work. And they write practical code for their theoretical work.
If you look at Udacity classes - I've watched Peter Norvig not Thrun's so I'll use that as a reference - Norvig places a lot of importance for tests, maintainability, readability and other practical things throughout his class. I would assume the code he writes (however little now, however much in the past) is very practical. Yet what he writes code for has a huge theoretical aspect to it. I'm saying one can have their body of work being theoretical by nature but that doesn't mean they don't write practical code.
Clueless managers who don't understand technology even on a superficial level are a real problem. Has nothing to do with how much engineer makes.
> The most common complain is They didn't give me good stuff to work on, yet when you ask the same people what exactly stops them from downloading...
Premise is people don't use technologies they like for their personal projects. I don't think that's true for the good hackers out there of course. But what they are talking here is about the work environment and technologies used (enforce) there. Just because you can use better tools for personal projects doesn't mean people shouldn't complain about the prehistoric tools at the their workplace. (And then you go on about money again.)
> After doing a lot of analysis...
Can you share more details please? Because all the smart people I've known no longer work at Indian firms if they ever did. I no longer work at them either, and trust me it's a (very) very very different environment. My college for a short period tried to not let these Indian consultancies recruit on campus.
A question for you. How do you justify developer happiness in an environment where there's no real source control, an impossible to use ticketing system, manager thinks a crawler is an actual hardware device like a photocopy machine, automation code is thrown away as you can't charge the client for that, load-testing results are manipulated to match the requirement (you keep requesting where for some reason out of 10 requests you get 3 "acceptable" data points and take screenshots only of those and report them) and I could go on an on. It's not about the money.
At the first one I automated some testing for them what would free up 3 people they were having to hire for that job. They didn't like it. Thats because they don't have to bear the cost associated with hiring them. It's the client who has to pay. By the person, by the hour and the company gets a (mega) huge cut from it. I'm not sure how such consultancy firms handle this conflict of interest else where but for Indian firms, I know anecdotally, this is very common. So there is no incentive to hire good programmers. Or do good programming because the server costs, etc. again are going to be borne by the client.
And the second one, I was working at another such Indian consultancy firm bit out of Singapore this time. The company was run by the sales force. My manager's manager said in one of his speeches that "as the iPad becomes dual core it will replace servers." I looked at him as my dual core iPad 2 lay in my lap and clapped because that's what you have to do. And I'm pretty sure he didn't mean a P2P future of the web. My manger on the other hand wanted a "function" done that could take in an "iDevice program" and output a BlackBerry app. He wanted it done in 3 hours. My team could have been an isolated incident and I want to believe that but it wasn't so. The only thing my team was doing different than the rest of the organization was the rest of the organization used some form of source control I had never heard of. Probably Microsoft based as that was the decision criteria in all cases. Out team was using none. Files were shared using USB flash drives. There were instances where old employees had left and we didn't have the source of their work - only the binaries. They only hiring a particular ethic group of Indians by the time I left.
Majority of jobs in India are consultancy jobs. They may not be as terrible as my last one but I would think they are half way there. Things may be changing but that's how most of "IT life" is.
Especially when one of the implied objectives of the service is to get rid of ads in the first place. Place a limit on space? Bandwidth? Then Instapaper's one time fee seems cheaper than a recurring cost. Even if it's a pay-only-once for X more articles per time you'll have to buy more when that limit is hit.