sturmen

Do you have any specific book recommendations for a layman?

There is some signal[1] that maybe Fuchsia as an OS will support Android apps out of the box. As I'm sure we both know though, ANYTHING can happen between now and the ship date.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2018/04/26/fuchsia-android-runtime-ap...

I like 360 panorama movies. Done right, the feeling of presence is excellent. VR is a niche to begin with, so I would hesitate to say that any one application (ex. CAD, gaming, 360 panoramas, etc) is the "killer app" so far since the audience is so small. As it grows (which I pray it will), we'll see definitive trends emerge.

Good find! Now if only there was a way to download them all at once...

I don't know the true answer to your question, but since encoding is expected to reach just 5X of VP9 by the end of this year, I think decoding is in the same order.

The plan, of course, is in the coming years there will be decoders baked into the silicon so the computational complexity is offloaded from the CPU and therefore becomes (in some ways) irrelevant.

I guess I don't understand your question. Is it "What makes Flutter different?" or "Why doesn't Flutter work for me?"

"Google" is actually a key differentiator here, because I think Google is uniquely focused on both design (it's been a long road to get here, but at this point I think Google is second only to Apple in design focus.) and interopability. Apple would _never_ make a cross-platform UI framework. What does this mean? Google's vast resources in design, development, & testing, equaled by very few, are behind this initiative. There's no doubt that is a competitive advantage.

The more interesting question is "Why does Flutter exist?" Google is, after all, a business. What's the ROI? Here's my theory: Google is known to be developing a new operating system from scratch called Fuschia[1]. Many many OSes have died in the crib because there was no app ecosystem for them, and thus the cost of switching to the "new thing" was too high for users. How do you solve this problem? Maybe if you create a cross-platform app development framework that lets developers write for the two incumbents while also ensuring compatibility with your new OS...

[1] https://9to5google.com/2018/01/23/what-is-google-fuchsia-os/

Agreed: Qualcomm is not a "patent troll", they're a normal company with a very sizable IP portfolio they rightfully innovated and use in their own products, as well as licensing to other companies. Whether they abuse their market position is its own question, but they have nothing to do with companies that were founded solely to buy vague "shopping cart" patents and make money only via lawsuit settlements.

The referenced blog post by the founder/chairman of MPEG is worth reading.[1] In it, Chiariglione expresses regret not for the money and control his organization is losing, but for the loss of competition which he claims will slow innovation. It will be interesting to see if this comes to pass, but my hope is that the collaboration of these companies will outpace the historically siloed research consisting of a dozen companies duplicating work.

[1] http://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solut...

The cities that don't get chosen, yes. But the thinking is that Amazon has already secretly picked a city years ago (Let's say Washington, DC) who was not originally planning to offer any tax breaks.Then they make a this big show that's basically The Bachelor, causing every city to fall over themselves to offer tax breaks. Once 200+ cities offer tax breaks, then Washington, DC feels compelled to "bid" like everyone else, unknowingly sweetening a deal that has already been "made."

Note: this was a relatively small sample (40 total, split in half for placebo/not), who were elderly people who already have "mild" memory problems, and given a concentrated turmeric derivative rather than just sprinkling it over food.

In summary: very cool, and I'd offer these curcumin supplements to anyone 50+ but sprinkling turmeric on your breakfast cereal ain't going to do much for high schoolers.

we call it "growth hacking"

This was mentioned by someone else, but in case you missed it: the "concise format" is a result of this being a 23-tweet tweet storm that the Threadreader has compiled into one page for us.

I think the look is a great improvement.

This is excellent. Looking forward to the full release with the hope that pricing is affordable for hobbyists. :)

Hi Adam! I installed Markdown Here from the Chrome Web Store, and I noticed it installed 2.12.0. However, it looks like you released 2.13.1 on GitHub. Should I be installing from GitHub?

I appreciate the philosophy. Is there a live demo so we can try it out?

edit: I turned on my brain and found the link was on the homepage the whole time.

The FAQ states I should shoot them an email to get my device added to the support list, but I can't seem to find the email address… Am I blind? Can someone point me to it?

Here's the blog post announcing it: https://blog.google/products/google-vr/poly-browse-discover-...

It would seem that CineForm is inherently simple, so perhaps it does not infringe on any of the "more clever" codec's inventions (AKA patents). I imagine GoPro ran it through legal before doing this.

This is awesome! I was literally rolling my eyes this morning about trying to read an arXiv paper on my phone.

As everyone said, 60fps is not the destination but merely a waypoint. It's a good goal, considering 99% of screens that are in use today refresh at 60 Hz or their regional equivalent. Higher refresh rates are next.

And perhaps for the final time. Google has released a support library[1] to put the onus back on individual app developers to integrate support for new emoji, and it is compatible all the way back to 4.4 (Kit Kat).

[1] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/look-and-feel/...

I own Spectacles. Yes, you can retrieve the videos and do whatever you want with them, without ever sharing them via Snapchat. Here's the workflow:

1. Take video

2. Enable BT and WiFi on your smartphone

3. Open Snapchat on your smartphone

4. Wait for what seems like forever for the phone to find the Spectacles. Charging them in the case seems to help, as does charging the phone?

5. Wait for the phone to grab the low res version.

6. Wait for the phone to grab the "HD" version. (Note: this may (?) be automatic on iOS. I own an LG V20.)

7. Navigate through Snapchat's terrible interface to the video you want to save.

8. Save to your phone. You're done!

They come out as 800x800 videos that are circular, so the true resolution is (-21.4% vs square).

Squarespace is wonderful from a WYSIWYG standpoint, and doesn't require immersing yourself in the WordPress ecosystem.

Are you positing it could be "we added (X*Y) number of subscribers this quarter, and for every Y subscribers we need to add 1 tower, but we only added (less than X) towers"? Reportedly, Verizon has some of the slowest[1] subscriber growth among the smartphone carriers, so that doesn't pass the smell test unless Verizon simply decided that hoarding money was higher priority than providing the good customer experience that drives growth.

For months (years?) there have been swirlings that Verizon can't handle "unlimited", accusations they've denied[2], OpenSignal's conclusion seems the most likely.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/even-sprint-topped-at-t-verizon-in... [2] http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-execs-dismiss...

I had no idea it was so taxing, but I do want to let you know that MaNGOS is probably what set me on a path of learning programming (which has become my career) so I am indebted to you.

this guy gets it

You can take this today by enabling corporate lockdown modes of your smartphone and trusting someone else with the key.