pi-err

> it’s tragic that Aperture and iPhoto were axed in favor of the horrifically bad Photos app (that looks like some Frankenstein “iOS X” app)

I find Photos.app to be the best Apple app I've ever used. It's simple, modern, works amazingly well between iOS and OS X, transparently manages 100GB of data between iCloud and local storage.

This entire piece is surfing on Mossberg's take and goes way too far.

From what we know, Apple does seem to be sorting out big challenges on software side:

- transition to Swift on 2 platforms, which won't happen until they decide to only support 64-bits OS X and iOS at some point in 2017 or 2018 or later

- OS X and iOS foundations are actually super solid. Accidents happen, both codebases are now much more mature and stable. Probably the best they had for decades

- manage the largest updates in history yearly. You hear of bugs because everybody gets to experience them at the same time. Windows never got that many million devices updated overnight

On top of that, they do seem to have conflicting marketing priorities. They don't know what to do with iTunes - as a brand, as an app, as an experience. They're obviously conflicted whether a user should depend on the AppStore to do stuff (feature creep in Notes.app).

IMO this "apple software sucks" is more a consequence of a stalled marketing than an engineering problem.

TIL that the DCX was canceled by Nasa not for technical reasons - looks more like politics. The program was 21 months old and cost $60M.

Is that correct? Amazing that this was achievable 20 years ago. Why no other re-usable rocket since 1996 if this was doable?

Agreed. Strangely, this concept seems to replicate with bikes most mistakes done previously with cars (and 60's concepts around planes). The designer is actually sort of aware of this, not understanding the consequences:

> "Residential bike parking should have the same space-syntax relationship to the front door and kitchen as car parking does in a contemporary house in the suburbs," Fleming says.

Designing cities around people, not a way to transport them, is missing from this approach.

It's actually a much harder challenge than figuring out funny (and unsustainable) ways to bring "speed" to personal transportation within cities. Creatively, this concept is entirely underwhelming.

> diesel maintenance vs petrol

Diesel engines are more vulnerable when driven cold and on short distances (i.e.: typical european city usage). They do need periodic fine tuning, which is mandatory here in most european countries. If the engines has DEF, it has to be refilled and carefully maintained. If it hasn't, the filters also need care (again, most people overlook this).

> fuel price

diesel fuel is about 30% cheaper in Europe, where diesel accounts >50% sales in key countries (germany, spain; france 80% in 2008). Obviously not relevant in the US where diesel is basically non existent. Europe is the main diesel market in the world - worth spending some time there in a major diesel city to forge a definite opinion.

> Paris

Actually less cars in city center, and more in the overall urban area. NOx are contributor, so are Particle Matter PM-6 and PM-10, both byproducts of diesel engines in actual use (obviously far above euro6 norms). Up to 80% of PM in London come from diesel, according to UK government: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/green-motoring/10190942/...

I get that your personal experience with diesel in the US is not bad. Like asbestos sounded great when it saved your family from fire. But really, don't use it.

Modern Diesel technology requires maintenance, fine tuning and specific temperature ranges to live up to its hype. Outside of this envelope, the engines run noisy and produce high amounts of particules.

Most people buy a diesel car because the fuel is cheaper, they will basically not care about those 3 aspects.

As for the result, the article points to Paris: the city didn't have a smog problem 20 years ago, and now spends half the year with smog warnings (60% diesel cars in Paris area). Just walking by, you'll notice most cars are noisier and smell much more than in a comparable situation in London or NYC. By now, diesel cars in Paris area are the main particule emitters, ahead of heating.

Diesel is a high price technology disguised as cost efficient by an inconsiderate european strategy. Can't wait to see diesel go away - a large scale environmental disaster.

I'm pretty sure it has. I always feel jet-lagged in Paris, in a way I never felt in London or Berlin (both closer to their solar noon). Also felt deeply unwell in Bilbao (although the city's so brilliant). The most noticeable thing is that 7am is night time about half the year in Paris (from October to April) when it's at least dusk in London all year long (maybe not in December).

It's pretty clear that Paris is less of a morning-city than London.

TL;DR: friends had a bad experience once with Airbnb, will not use again.

This is not about Airbnb as a business strategy or work place or UX etc.

Speaking of UX, I do find that Airbnb does a pretty good job at managing expectations and making sure people find their fit (I don't have any figure though).

Yes and yes. For all its shortcomings and challenges, bike sharing led millions to re-explore their city and question the role of the car in commuting.

Yes and no - streaming and iTunes are pretty good for most things "mainstream" music. Soundcloud though: there's no excuse for them at least not to _try_. Just like for her, ads and passive aggressive song selection are killing the experience.

Then for content at large, there's pretty much everything to do. Not surprised if Stripe and ApplePay, both focused on this micro-amount market, take it all.

Or it says that there's an untapped opportunity for low friction, micro-transactions instead of "ads" or full-fledged purchases on unknown websites.

It's clear by now that ads are for lazy. If your plan is to monetize your site with ads, today just like 10 years ago, you lost.

Edit: surprised by the negativity on her reaction for _hacker_news. She's rebuffed by the $ and time investment for a single song ("unknown website, takes time to create an account, multiply by times she wants to buy a song). As she says:

> and not enough to pay to risk giving my credit card to an unknown third party.

This is a UX challenge, not some morale lecture.

19th century long form fiction is TV show for the time. Weekly episodes in mainstream newspapers. Hugo, Flaubert, Dumas, Zola used the format for decades. People will find Game of Thrones "too little into a show" soon enough, too.

From the article:

> a stealthy fighter jet years that is often called a flying computer because of its more than 8 million lines of code

For all the critics, all the hate vs drones and leaner fighters and bombers, the F-35 _is_ an impressive engineering feat and a turning point, especially re:software.

At some point, a "Snow Leopard" version of the F-35 will turn out as a very fine piece of equipment, only possibly without the initial cost benefits expectations. Also: most learnings will probably be lost because the project will not have a decisive cost/performance advantage despite its complexity. The plane won't have a successor.

Hopefully we can hear at some point of contractors who worked on its systems.

My reaction was based on the interview where they say that the 30k$ charge was harming, not killing them. You're more knowledgeable than me on CloudFlare and it may very well be a strong option.

Now in a way their $ penalty with this attack is not unlike growth. To me it sounds like they invested in their branding and will have a name as a company that can sustain damage and keep its ground - important because their goal is to be credible in bringing content in/out China.

What if they had given in? They'd be yet another victim of an attack sort of linked with China.

I do see a business sense behind what I assumed was their moral stance and I definitely stand by it.

Not sure that turning the light off is the first thing you want to do when you're bullied.

And pretty certain that there's zero PR value in those stories.

> The industrial revolution was the same as other technological revolutions and not distinct from them in that it reduced the exertion and strain put on workers ... the condition of workers improved dramatically in the 19th century

Industrialization, massification, standardization of production and moving to big cities have had tough consequences on worker's life. Charlie Chaplin shows just that. It was a tougher life than traditional community life with flexible work amounts.

You could definitely argue that there was an improvement in caloric supply (except in some countries). For the general happiness, though, industrial revolution has been a tough time.

Refreshing. After a burnout, I set to work 25h a day (program management role). I realized soon enough that I was crazy more efficient. I was also less stressed, less verbose, left all frustration behind, and started to see people change the way they saw me (= they started to like me).

It's a competitive advantage to offer less hours and more intensity.

> But I've been using OS X all this time, and honestly I don't think it's any worse than before.

Agreed. Yosemite has been flat out the best OS X version I used. Zero bug except a few Airplay issues. I'm even using beta builds for production, this thing is that stable.

I'm suspecting that Marco's point shows how a maturing part of the developer/consumer now takes a larger mindshare. Not a bad thing, it's just that it doesn't tell much on the product.

edit: Marco says this gets him 7.8m/s traffic, so there has to be something for _many_ here.

It's easy to laugh off those freaks, I did it too before I became one.

TL,DR: OCD behaviors are boosted by physiological stress, we can redesign our world for less stress, and there is in fact a big risk that medicine doesn't help you in non-emergencies situation.

I relate the Morgellons story to candida as you can see people on curezone talking about it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candida_albicans). People on this board sound as desillusional as in the story, looking at their poops for hours and trying all kind of enemas and diets in giant waves of pseudoscience. It's also the same notion that something wrong is hidden in you, an evil invisible root cause.

---

Long story short, after years of various strange affections on an otherwise healthy body, I found information online on candida. Symptoms matched to a point and so I spent some time on blogs and boards and eventually landed on curezone. I ended up looking at my poop like so many others there. Doubt really is infectious, everything becomes blurry and so I started watching for the tell-tell sign of candida, just in case. Still surprised that I ended up doing this.

After a few weeks (months?) I realized I was getting OCD with that and needed to move on to a better obsession. Doctors had also told me that it didn't make any sense and everything on the net was just BS. My problems were somatic and so I found a better obsession.

The funny thing is that years later, after symptoms got worse, a stool test did diagnose me with candida along with other parasites that I had gotten as a kid in Africa. I got cured and never felt better since then. It did change my life. I still feel that I was a loony when I try to auto-diagnose - it was just a coincidence that candida was involved, my method was all wrong. Candida is not visible to the naked eye, and there's next to no chance to auto-diagnose and auto-cure from it without coaching.

I take from this that our medicine system is designed around emergencies and clear symptoms and does not deal with many new "blurry" pathologies born out from stressful lifestyles. Challenges:

- those guys (and I) need care designed around empathy, listening and being coached into healthier lifestyles. There's next to no offer for that. Psychiatrists and mental specialists are siloed into talking and/or meds. There are real physiological and practical aspects that need to be added and followed up for it to be effective.

- I was lucky to be able to afford a holistic nutritionist working with leading labs to perform expensive stool tests that finally helped me. Including treatment, it cost me above £1500, 0% supported by healthcare (it was in the UK, would have been the same in France or anywhere else, I bet). For most, most doctors are still siloed in their discipline and provide neither empathy nor a convincing bridge between info found online and their own expertise.

- our lifestyles are inducing high level of physiological stress that our human organisms can't deal with. Work, food, cities, that goes way beyond medicine: redesigning all those things to limit stress levels is _the_ opportunity for our generation.

I was as excited to see Phillae land on a comet as I would have been if it were a human. It feels irresistible to me that robots are human's presence outside Earth. We're sharing the same network.

Still I'm not surprised if a permanent Moon base replaces ISS in the future. At that point, doesn't it make more sense to build on solid ground rather than in a low-orbit mecano bound to burn in the atmosphere?

Pretty sure as well that we are all underestimating leisure and entertainment as a driver of future space exploration. This is the true Jurassic Park. Air travel didn't become routine for science but thanks to tourists.

It took >300 years for transatlantic marine routes to reach acceptable levels of safety - and it really had to wait for modern navigation system + coal propulsion + metal.

I wonder if going to space will become routine before supraconduction and MHD drives are widespread. Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_1 for air travel.

Agreed, being present is _the_ thing. You don't get there in a day though. In my experience, working on a screen blurs my awareness at some point and I can fall in limbo even when I least expect it. Even after days of flow.

If you want to improve your kick-boxing and find it hard to actually commit to get there, it helps to prepare your bag in advance, with clean and ready gear in it so you don't have to hesitate when you want to go.

So I see those focus cheats as the online equivalent. It helps my flow because if I slip on some link, I'll have a nice reminder to her back to awareness.

I use Delay (Safari extension) which doesn't alllow to set a timer - it's either on or off. This looks better- feels like preparing my Mac for sparring.

Well $1,000/trip is a super low premium to chase.

50 years of commercial airline operations have been hard for niche aircrafts. I'm not bullish on the hopes of a LEO commercial plane in our lifespan. It's a tough equation:

- a LEO plane won't be developed without presales that warrant safe funding (ie. from flagship airlines)

- incumbents are all about kerosene and do not want to add a significantly different tech to their already complex operations.

- new comers will not get access to enough capital to secure the development of a disruptive engine technology

Airlines make cash by moving a diversified mix of people and cargo. I just don't see anyone moving to the (super volatile) premium-only market with a supersonic high fixed cost jet.

The screenshots on github use the thin variant of San Francisco - the equivalent to the current Helvetica Neue would be regular San Francisco. I also suspect they use the "Display" instead of "Text" version, which makes the kerning look strange.

San Francisco seems to work best at (very) small sizes, where Helvetica breaks. It proves further that Apple thinks of each screen size as a distinct UI - clearly the biggest difference with Google's approach to UI. Off topic: the 2 screen sizes for Watch show they don't want accidental developers for this platform, only fully committed ones.

I do find Helvetica works better on my Mac screen than SF (I tested in Mail.app).

I have found a few sites reject the + in gmail addresses. I also suspect most DB (or wannabe spammners) would know about this and remove anything after the + sign. Same goes for the "." trick. Still good to know though.

I'm now using Blur (https://www.abine.com/index.html). Very effective so far at creating aliases pointing to my real email. Only worried on how they'll fund their operations long term.

Didn't the Bush vs Gore election prove this tragically wrong? Each vote counts. Outcomes _are_ different. I thought this was a hard learned lesson for our generation.

I'm not a US citizen, though.

Agreed - the article feels anecdotical. Or does JLP have insider knowledge on something deeper?

I can relate in London on how Google's culture obsesses with IQ, compared for instance to Apple who's more on the EQ side. Yet I don't see how this conflicts with a new search box that actually solves a problem with minimum risk (JLP himself mentions the problem is more on Amazon side for using the new feature).

The vortex gave some hype to backup 10 years ago. Was it enough to make backup widespread? Interestingly: no - backup is still under 50% among Mac users. And for those did use TM, it made the thing slower.

So moving on, cloud looks like a safer approach to backup because no friction. Yes, data security, etc. From a public service POV, though, for 99% people out there, I bet the trade off is hugely favorable to cloud stockage vs local disk failure.

So now - is iCloud drive sexy enough to want to use it? Actually that's more like the problem, it's definitely not.

I get that building a _new_ automated metro is easy. Converting an _older_ line to automatic and fully driverless is what's hard. AFAIK, there's only one conversion so far to full auto: Line 1 in Paris. It took 10 years and billions of euro to deliver (it's a total success though) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Métro_Line_1#Automation

Interestingly, it seems the main obstacle is software - contractors are few, code is highly specific, ISO certification and warranty issues are very unattractive.

Very interested how TfL will approach this. They're really good at what they do, even at communicating (responsive website!). Don't think anybody does it better.

I see Google as an automation company based on data and monetized by advertising.

Does it make Google an advertising company? Yes by the bottom line, no by this strategy. It just happens it's the best way to monetize what they have so far.

Analogy: would you define 1905 Einstein as a patent clerk or a scientist?

You're not helping the Scottish cause with junk info like this. (I'm French and pro-independence)

"EU is a business", "north pays for south", "zero chance that the EU..." - all parts of a thought process that'd lead you to disaster .

The EU is a complex, unique international organization designed to bring peace through unprecedented one-of-a-kind economic development.

I get from Brussels insiders that a best-case scenario is an independent Scotland joining the eurozone, while rUK votes to stay in the EU with a "ad hoc" status.

Now most member states have very different feelings about this. This forces the EU Commission to keep a low profile and stick to conservative answers on any independence question.

You have to realize that there _is_ a risk that some member states can block a fast track accession to EU for iScotland. For instance iScotland could have to go through a 3-5 years roadmap and audit until the standard 12 points for accession are cleared (vs a best case, unprecedented 12-months fast track to the EU).

As I see it, this is the biggest risk for iScotland. Even with EU Parliament on your side, member states have influence and power that could slow down the process, and expose the new country to a tough start. I hope the Yes wins, but I hope the win doesn't get ruined with unrealistic expectations.

Wikipedia has a nice sum up of the complexity of this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_enlargement_of_the_Euro...