Hacker News Reader

bitmapbrotheron Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

Google cannot update a phone that uses an OS built by another OEM. Since the OEM cited in this complaint is a low end Huawei phone they're responsible for pushing the update.

bitmapbrotheron Vevo could have been ‘an existential threat’ to YouTube, but YouTube won

According to YouTube they now have 1.8 billion logged in users each month. So I guess you could call that winning.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billi...

As for their profitability:

https://medium.com/@intenex/where-are-you-getting-hard-data-...

bitmapbrotheron Illustration in the App Store

Google Play usually has a new custom illustration for every promotion. The current one is Big in Japan.

https://play.google.com/store/apps

bitmapbrotheron GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

>No ads, no tracking, no cookies, not even Javascript. Just plain HTML+CSS and JPEG images.

Are we viewing the same page? Not only do I see JavaScript in the EU page, but I also see this in the code:

"trackingServer":"gannett.hb.omtrdc.net"},"market":"gpapermobileapp","trackingServer":"repdata.usatoday.com","trackingServerSecure":"srepdata.usatoday.com"},"ads"

bitmapbrotheron Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

>The only reason anyone remembers the LG Prada is to bring it up in this kind of discussion.

The reason people bring up the LG Prada is because it proves the form factor of a touch screen phone with a bottom button existed before the introduction of the iPhone.

>If it was so radical and ground-breaking, how come LG are an also-ran Android OEM and not the most valuable company ever?

Not all radical and ground breaking designs succeed. The Prada's software was also far from revolutionary or memorable for that matter.

>It's an asinine argument as it takes the most superficial elements, such as a full touchscreen, conveniently ignoring the actual things that made the iPhone so innovative, such as multitouch UX, proper web browser, full featured operating system, exclusive carrier partnerships and more.

About the only relevant thing you mentioned was having a multi-touch UX on a phone - a technology they didn't invent, but just made popular.

bitmapbrotheron Facebook and Google hit with $8.8B in lawsuits on day one of GDPR

>We got patent trolls now we'll have GDRP trolls

Do EU lawsuits require the plaintiff to pay the legal costs of the defendant if they lose? If so, I doubt we'll be seeing GDRP trolls unless those GDRP trolls are well financed and prepared to pay all of the legal costs.

bitmapbrotheron Facebook and Google hit with $8.8B in lawsuits on day one of GDPR

The same logic can also be applied to virtually any contract you sign that contains pages and pages of legal text. Should the same rights be applied to legally binding contracts that require only a signature? Shouldn't there be a required intermediary that explains the full details of what your signing in a language you can comprehend?

bitmapbrotheron Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

>The design was originally reasonably polarizing/radical. Half the reason these design elements are now so widespread is because everyone immediately copied Apple.

The LG Prada was shown off before the introduction of the iPhone. To imply that the iPhone was polarizing/radical and that the LG Prada was not is ridiculous IMO.

https://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/apple-iphone-vs-lg-prada...

bitmapbrotheron Apple Wins $539M from Samsung in Damages Retrial

Today’s decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages

This case is far from over and will be quickly appealed as the award makes absolutely no sense and goes against the Supreme Court ruling.

bitmapbrotheron The Bill Gates Line

I find it funny that 60 minutes neglected to mention the Yelp documentary Billion Dollar Bully that exposes Yelp's business practices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2dkJctUDIs&t=3s

bitmapbrotheron Apple Signs Deal with Volkswagen for Driverless Car

>They don't. Android was an acquisition and so was Waymo.

What they bought likely doesn't even exist anymore in the current code base.

Additionally, the origin of iOS is based on Apple's acquisition of NeXT.

bitmapbrotheron Google One is coming soon

This is the name of their paid storage offering with live customer support.

bitmapbrotheron Google One is coming soon

No, it's not a re-brand. It's the name for their paid storage plans with live customer support.

https://www.blog.google/products/google-one/one-simple-way-g...

bitmapbrotheron Google is rebranding storage plans as “Google One”

>About fucking time.

They've offered chat and phone support for their phones and Google Play for years. I've never had a problem chatting or talking to a CSR on the phone. In fact, every Nexus and Pixel phone has a built in 24/7 support app that allows you to chat, talk or get a call back from a support person.

bitmapbrotheron Google is rebranding storage plans as “Google One”

It's good that you didn't sign up to use these experimental Amazon services.

"Amazon Killing Off its $60/Year Plan for Unlimited Storage"

"Amazon is killing off its Music Storage subscription service"

"Amazon to discontinue Fresh delivery in some states"

"Amazon is shutting down its 'Underground Actually Free' program"

"Amazon Will Discontinue Its Vendor Express Platform"

etc...

bitmapbrotheron Google is rebranding storage plans as “Google One”

>YouTube Red is already $9.99 - just add the 2TB Drive option for free and starting selling everyone on the Google One branding

You would also be getting Google Play Music since its bundled with Red.

bitmapbrotheron Google is rebranding storage plans as “Google One”

>And there is 'Android One', which is designed for low-end devices

You're thinking of Android Go. Android One is for phones, not made by Google, that receive guaranteed OS and security updates. All of Nokia's phones are Android One phones.

bitmapbrotheron Australian regulator investigates Google data harvesting from Android phones

The experts, from computer and software corporation Oracle, claim Google is draining roughly one gigabyte of mobile data monthly from Android phone users’ accounts as it snoops in the background, collecting information to help advertisers.

Sometimes you need to take off the gloves and get your hands dirty. Google really needs to take Oracle to task for their public smear campaign.

bitmapbrotheron Java 10 and beyond – a look at the potential language change

>Yeah, and Google made their opinion of Java quite clear by adding first-party support for Kotlin.

Which is good for Android developers as they crave that syntactic sugar. Unfortunately, businesses have different priorities.

>As for Java being popular because it has mindshare, you are agreeing with my original point. It doesn't continue to exist because it's a good language. It continues to exist because of inertia.

It may not have all of the syntactic sugar that other languages have at the moment, but given its new release cadence its only a matter of time before it reaches feature parity.

bitmapbrotheron GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

Doc Seals has been proclaiming that the ad tech bubble is going burst every time he appears on the Gillmor Gang. It's gotten to the point where he now sounds like a broken record. I guess he thinks that if he repeats it long enough it'll eventually come true. I'll be looking forward to his follow up appearances where he backtracks and explains why it hasn't.

bitmapbrotheron Java 10 and beyond – a look at the potential language change

First and foremost the reason why it's still so popular is its commitment to backwards compatibility. Enterprises love languages that don't continuously break their code bases. And then there's its unparalleled ecosystem, its massive developer talent pool and its availability on a number of platforms.

And with the introduction of Graal and Truffle I'd say Java is one of the more interesting languages to follow nowadays.

bitmapbrotheron Java 10 and beyond – a look at the potential language change

New features are released every 6 months. Is there another extremely popular language with a quicker release cadence?

bitmapbrotheron You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

I must have missed their cross platform GUI development framework.

bitmapbrotheron Uhh, Google Assistant Impersonating a Human on the Phone Is Scary as Hell to Me

It's hard to take an article seriously when the title is so full of hyperbole. This person needs to experience what scary as hell is before using that line next time.

bitmapbrotheron The new Google News: AI meets human intelligence

FWIW I've never experienced those issues using Google News on iOS.

bitmapbrotheron You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

Technically, VS Code is based on Google software.

bitmapbrotheron Volvo to Use Google Assistant, Play Store and Maps in Next-Gen Infotainment

Can you cite where in the video where these long delays were?

bitmapbrotheron Android P

The multitasking display was really interesting because they seem to be live windows so that you can interact with them.

bitmapbrotheron Google launches Flutter Beta 3, its Android and iOS mobile app SDK

There's nothing bad providing you're using the native language of the platform. With React you have to go through bridge code to communicate with the native controls. So there's a level of indirection to and from the native control. Flutter communicates with its widgets directly so there's no level of indirection. The other major advantage is that it compiles to native code so performance is always going to be superior.

bitmapbrotheron Volvo to Use Google Assistant, Play Store and Maps in Next-Gen Infotainment

The level of customization an OEM can do is pretty remarkable. This is Android Auto in an Audi Q8 and it looks nothing like Vanilla Android Auto or Carplay for that matter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xf5hVqZHPY