optforfon

As far as I know Lumina is a one man project. I remember listening to a podcast with him. It sounded very much like a guy started messing around and trying stuff out and ended up with Lumina. Kinda like Hammer2 is also mostly a one man project. That's why it's pretty slow moving.

Sorry about LxQt. Wish I had some Qt experience to help out

If it came out tomorrow it'd be 10 years too late. Cellphones seem to have hit a plateau. All the parts are now good enough in a cheap phone that no one really needs this.

I got a $150 aluminum phone with a huge battery, nice enough camera, fingerprint scanner, 3GBs of RAM, expandable storage, etc. etc. ... I don't feel like I need expansion options. What can the higher-specs really offer now a days?

Samsung has the right idea, maybe we'll need better phones for VR. Or maybe built in picoprojectors will be a game changer. But for that you'll need a whole new phone - not just a module snaps on.

Even if you don't reuse a function it still encapsulates certain things. By looking at the name you know what it does (self-documenting-code). The interface tells you what variables it depends on. And finally it logically segregates your code.

I think the real reason people don't like small function is simply code navigations - which honestly is a poor excuse. That's an editor/IDE problem

Okay, growing lettuce in space is better than not doing it at all... but how many billions of dollars are you willing to pay for it? Lots of research helps with "beyond cis-lunar" exploration. Maybe building a biosphere in antarctica? While I'm glad it exists, the ISS is a very expensive project that seems to do rather insignificant research

So are there are any cool applications?

Maybe I'm having a lack of imagination... but I have no idea what I'd do with one even if I wasn't constrained by size. Even on the ISS they seem to have run out of interesting things to do (last I heard they were growing lettuce in space...). Just wondering if anyone has got any cool ideas

No one remembers how Linode tried to cover up getting hacked?

Am I misremembering something, or weren't they planning to replace the "Projects" files with CMake?

right, but once you start writing inline assembly it's no longer a "cross platform assembly" - and I think there is a demand for that. For instance the Linux kernel supports a mind-boggling amount of different architectures and "just write in-line assembly" probably doesn't cut it

"large populations of people who go completely untroubled with it."

Stockholm syndrome.... Or a lack of imagination about how things could be better. There really is a cult-like adoration of C - I think mostly by people that don't use it and learning it in college and long for something as simple

I respectfully disagree. I think C is a giant disaster that will continue to plague us entirely due to inertia. You're really underestimating how entrenched it is. Try to go program on micro in something other than C. Try programming a driver. The toolchains simply don't exist - the comparability with several decades of work is also shaky.

C is a terrible cross platform assembly b/c it doesn't allow you the level of control which one would expect in this day and age. Maybe it was written in the days when CPUs were brain-dead simple, but basic things that are available on most architectures aren't part of the language. It has no notion of a CPU cache, it has no notion of branching (you can't tag a likely branch and an unlikely one), it even goes as far as to ignore user keywords for inlining and provides no keyword for blocking inlining. RVO is implicit magic that you just pray happens. Const != immutability.

When you write C you have no notion of what the compiler is going to output whatsoever

A lot of these things are available through compiler extensions (so great, now it's not cross-platform), but even still the language is broken. "Expert C Programming" has a really long chapter that goes over all the more confusing subtly problems C has beyond just arrays being pointers-but-not-really.

I have to use C pretty regularly and all I can think is "God.. why hasn't anyone made this better yet"

By giving everything away for free?

The only related revenue stream M$ seems to have left is Azure with some vague notion that giving away their ecosystem will drive people to use their cloud more

Some people are just much better organized. I studied physics at a pretty good school. A lot of my classmates were very smart and hard workings. We spend easily 8 hours a day doing problem sets. Then we had an exchange student who cam from France (from the Prepas system) and he was just so much more organized with his work. He would sit down and very carefully read the chapter, make sure he understood everything. Then work through each problem carefully and then spend the rest of the day relaxing. Till he was done he wouldn't get distracted, check his phone, shoot the shit classmates. Just a very focused mind.

Looking back at college it was easily 80% worrying about doing work and 20% actually doing it. With something like programming, knowing how to use a debugger, profiler and an IDE give you a huge leg up. Easily 95% of CS students never take the time to learn the tools b/c you have to do it on your own time - but you have other homework to stress out about.

I've been using Debian for ever .. but honestly it's mostly b/c the critical mass it has. If I have a problem it's pretty straightforward to find solutions. I think there are distributions that are more advanced and interesting (NixOS) and with quicker updates to their packages (Arch), but since I don't want to fiddle with my computer all day I just use use Debian.

Maybe some day something a little more modern will take off but for the time being I'll stick to what works - Debian

I dunno what the extensiblity features are of this game, it would be cool if you could write scripts for a planet's creatures. Try to build ecosystems. And then you can share those online with others. Kinda like those AI competitions but with no end goal

Sure. There are tons. Starbucks is everywhere, KFC, McDonalds, Walmart is doing okay along with Carrefour. Apple ofcourse is completely crushing the phone market (and it's not just so they can employ a few factories of manual laborers) Car comapnies do just fine. I'm sure there is a ton of industrial espionage and technology transfer from government to local companies (hard to explain some advances otherwise.. ), but articles screaming about Chinese protectionism mostly stink of "bad sportsmanship". Some of these companies just blew it (Uber and Ebay) or they're social media platforms. The reality is that the government wants control over the media and what 99% of people hear and read. So platforms like Facebook or Google (with their vague moral obligation about not being "evil") make them very nervous. I talked to a Malaysia Chinese guy who supported the censorship and he explained it this way. In the third world (esp if you look at the middle east) there is a huge problem of misinformation and hysteria. People eat up all sorts of conspiracy theories and factoids gets spun out of control and can't get contained. In a country with lots of superstitions like China that's almost doubly worrying. So the government seems it in it's interest to control that kind feedback loop (obviously in part to keep itself in power... you could see some local protest about some minor issue blowing up into a national protest) So in general once some social media platform seems to get a critical mass it gets either brought down a peg or brought into the fold somehow (like Tencent buying League of Legend and some Android game)

I'm not condoning their policies, but they have their own internal consistency that's a little more nuanced then just "fuck the foreigner companies"

You're right, but you're also thinking way too big-picture were saving face and corruption play a daily role. You're missing the crazy chaos that happens on a daily basis on a small scale - which is both positive and negative. This same friend for instance decided to open up a restaurant. It's on rooftop area with a few other bars.

It's zoned as residential property but that's not stopping anyone. In general, as long as you're not bothering anything no one cares about any regulations (again, on the small scale. If you you're big and have money and people want to fuck you over then there is no escaping it. On paper this is a socialist system and they have the laundry list of regulation to back it up).

He doesn't get permits to build walls, to put in a bar, to tear out half the place and put in something completely new. There is no health inspection, liquor license or firesafety inspection. It's basically, go rent a property, hire a bunch of people to do the manual labor, remodel and you're cookin'!

In a way the little guy has a leg up on all the commercial chains that do have to follow the rules

And everything in China kinda works like that. No months of planning, chasing investors, getting permits, getting licenses pussy-footing around and figuring out your supply chain. They just go and do it. It's the bootstrapper's dream.

Along the way some walls collapse and some people get food poisoning, but this place is changing at a astronomical rate. You can't contain it

One of my buddies here in China (who's been here for ever) told me that the China always say that we in the West talk too much. That we talk talk talk and never actually get anything done. In China people just do thing - often stupid things, but it's often the quickest way to learn how to do it right.

the problem is on the merchant side. if you're selling $1 bowls of noodle in a small town, buying a POS to read cards is pretty darn expensive, the CC fees are expensive, and there is no real incentive to be the first guy on the block with a POS.

Money doesn't buy you happiness, but at some point you prolly stop blaming it on your employer haha

it sounds a bit too idealistic. How about if someone is hired at a hire rate because "well we needed someone with his skill set ASAP, so we agreed to pay him a premium" (but we can't afford to pay everyone at that rate) or "We desperately needed someone quickly with skill set X and he was the only person available"

And sometimes comparing people and their skill sets is really apples to oranges. If one guy is an expert on some very specific top, and thats important for your business (and is therefore an expensive hire) - it doesn't mean you should create an incentive for other employees to learn his skill set (maybe you only need one statistician or expert in COBOL or whatever)

"There's no compensation system that makes everyone happy"

Sure, pay people way above market rate and don't allow them to compare wages. They will not feel ripped off and they don't develop a sense on inadequacy

Infants, people in comas, and the severely disabled probably don't have wechat

I think that's simplistic. All of the points are important together

Like I said, Facebook has the social graph and no one uses their payment system b/c

1 - you pay with credit cards and they're super entrenched and you don't forget your credit card like you may forget to bring enough cash

2 - at least personally... I rarely find I need to give my friends money in the US. It happens once in a while.. but not every week like in China

Lovely article, and a great introduction to the red envelope culture.

But I think the real reason WeChat's payment system has taken off is much simpler:

- People pay for everything with cash

- Sometimes you don't bring enough cash with you

- Paying for each others' meals, sending red envelops, etc is a daily thing here

- People don't have credit cards (so that whole technology has been completely leapfrogged, and why Facebook's money transaction haven't take off and we're stuck with our crappy CC system in the US)

- Everyone and their mothers has a WeChat (I've never met anyone that doesn't... it's more ubiquitous than Facebook in the US)

So even if you're not invested in the platform you'll most likely have some money on your wechat account just as emergency cash. And it's only true that you need a bank account if you want to take money out. For instance I don't have a bank account hooked up, but I have money on mine just from times when friends wanted to comp me for a meal.

I have an artist friend who does everything in Max/MSP. At first I was rather dismissive and thought he should just learn to code properly - but the patching environment makes him able to get results incredibly fast - much much faster than I can do with C++ (even using something like Openframeworks)

You can get a cheap Chromebook (which, though inexpensive are actually quite nice quality wise), install crouton on the chromebook, install Lil'Debi on the phone and have an X-server connection over USB. It'd cost about the same and you'd get to have an extra usable device

The way I see it, the only way I think it can really take off (as a niche product) is if the screen and keyboard are amazing (like a Pixel) and it's ultra thin (thinner than a Mac Air). Then I'm sure there is a crowd that wants to have their whole lives on their $700 super flagship cellphone and will have this very slick interface for when they want to access it with a bit more screen and keyboard.

I didn't really read into the details, so maybe you guys are already doing this, but you could also have the whole setup work from any given computer with a keyboard and screen

If you have something like that.. you could charge a LOT more.

Very slick kickstarter btw. Wish you guys the best =)

“Now they manufacture without our oversight”

I know several people who's job is overseeing Chinese manufacturing. They need constant oversight and quality inspection otherwise everything falls apart very very fast.

I'm currently living in South West China and, while this may sound culturally insensitive, there is a very very serious cultural problem with quality and attention to detail. People will work really long hours, but will always do the very bare minimum. It's at times absolutely staggering and infuriating. The reason manufacturing is in China isn't so much because they know how to do things, but because they will work long hours doing mundane work (because of very strong commitments to supporting their families) and because the supply chain is located here. If you need 10 thousands units of some widget by next week you can get it. Its quite likely it will be defective, but you can just buy another 10 thousand from the factory next door. The same infrastructure doesn't exist anywhere else

The reason innovation will happen is because Chinese people are doers. They just go and do things instead of talking about it all day. And sure, they do a lot of dumb things, but at the end of the days it all seems to work out. Thats why they own half of Africa already

here was an interesting proposal for a solution in C++ https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/CPP/C-PP-Con-2014/0007-Acce...

People that are scared seek asylum I think?

I think the smartest people in a country can be very formative of that country's future. Doesn't take a lot of people to form whole industries.

I don't have a source for you, but that's how I'm understood the policy. How else can you explain that there are green card lotteries for random people in other countries while PhD students are sent home after they get their diplomas? (and I'm talking engineering students, not Art History PhDs... people that will clearly "pay off")

I understand your arguments, but they're individualistic and end up leaving the world a worse place. If there was some kind of global free movement of people the 3rd world would never develop. I mean in a sense even in the US you have a problem that a lot of places probably are loosing their top talent constantly - even if they have good schools and good local governance.. the ambitious ones probably don't stay in Alabama - they likely go to NYC or SF or Washington. The only equalizing force is that people want to stay close to family and close to their culture.

That's such a myopic view of immigration. Countries are delighted that the US isn't causing a massive brain drain in the 3rd world. It's why US immigration is so difficult for skilled workers, and for the less skilled it's often based on green card lotteries and things that don't just skim the top talent from less fortunate countries.

At the same time the US tries to make it very easy for people to come for the short term - so that they can experience our way of life and maybe build some cultural bridges and mutual understanding.

The US isn't anti immgration for xenophobic reasons. Even very talented students are sent back to their countries, not because they couldn't contribute to the US and be great future citizens, but because it would be unethical for the government to do that on a large scale

I guess i'm more envisioning something like a SQL container. So if you have multiple instances of a pImpl class you would keep the actual state-variables/implementation in a DB. When you want to say do some complicated look up (ex: which objects fit some criteria) you would express that operation in terms of SQL queries

oh, sorry, has to due with the way windows switches between chinese and english. Sometimes it goes into a weird mode monospaced mode for some reason. Thought that would get stripped