techwatching

EDIT: Changed title to include "Show HN." Was just fooling around with the Google Charts API and wanted to share. These pie charts represent the top tags in each class of tag that news stories can be tagged with on techwatching. The charts visually show which tags dominate in their class - i.e.: as of the writing of this comment, POTUS is dominating the "People" class.

Good time to do this! Too bad there isn't a .ry TLD

https://hilla.ry/

This originally hit the news 10 days ago: http://techwatching.com/page/there-s-finally-a-tool-to-free-...

I wonder to what degree technology has played a role. The article references gang taunting etc. via the internet instead of on the street - would be interesting to know to what degree social networks, video games, etc. have had an impact on gang activities, and also the degree to which drug sales have moved off the street - i.e.: you don't need people hanging on the corner to sell drugs anymore.

Its not a drone. Its an RC copter.

And, judging from the video, why does this require a drone? Could't a dude in boat achieve the same ends just as easily?

You know what communicated the perils of Net Brutality to me? Images like this one:

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2009/10/29/net-neutrality-what-it-cou...

Websites being reduced to cable-like add ons. Just terrible.

Edit: I followed the chain of blog spam attribution all the way back to the original source of the Net Neutrality graphic:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9yj1f/heres_a_new_scen...

Edit2: Another similar example: http://images.appleinsider.com/netneutrality091808.png

Apparently this was a big deal in 2009.

Its low key. There's a very active design community, but comparatively limited startup activity.

Is there some behaviour that can't be coded with natural base pairs?

Yay Manitoba! Winnipeg here.

News roundup: http://techwatching.com/page/spacexs-third-iss-supply-missio...

good call!

Is there any likelihood that FFOS will ever be more than a niche player? From where I'm sitting it looks like Android & iOS are the big players, Windows Phone is the plucky upstart, and then there's dark horses and complementary products like Tizen and so on. With all of the big brands out there, where does FFOS propose to carve out a niche?

I guess. I would have agreed, except that Stack Overflow pointed the way. Quora feels like freaking Experts Exchange to me.

Agreed. Its always felt spammy to me - "Register to see more than the first answer." Why??

This. Work before work, after work, on the weekends, once the kids are in bed, whatever. If you have a dream, stretch for it.

Great response from Nest. But honestly - their algorithmic "trust us, the device knows what its doing" approach has always made me uncomfortable. The thermostat for instance - I don't want my thermostat to learn my habits and predict what temperature I want, etc. I just want to tell it what temperature the house should be and when, and leave it the hell alone.

Same thing with the smoke detector. False positive? Push the button. Its the rational ux given the criticality of failure modes involved.

A wrinkle that I think is often missed in discussion on the information economy is the transition from "service economy" to self-service economy. Not only is the traditional paradigm of selling labour under downward pressure, as per Wenger's article, but there's increasingly nowhere left to run. i.e.: what does a factory worker retrain for when local economies have been husked by technology?

The joke used to be: we all can't deliver pizzas to each other. Soon, drones will probably deliver the pizzas, and were going to have to change it to "we all can't sell heirloom tomatoes to each other at the farmers market" or something.

Different generations also have access to different opportunities.

What a day!

Windows 8.1 - Mouse and Keyboard Friendly, and Start Button returns: http://techwatching.com/page/mouse-and-keyboard-friendly-win...

Windows is Free on devices with less than 9 inch screens: http://techwatching.com/page/microsoft-making-windows-free-o...

Universal apps - develop once for phone, tablet, pc, xbox: http://techwatching.com/page/microsoft-unveils-universal-win...

Windows Phone 8.1 w/ Cortana: http://techwatching.com/page/microsoft-demonstrates-windows-...

Touchscreen Office relaunch: http://techwatching.com/page/microsoft-unveils-redesigned-of...

Is it weird that I wistfully read that as Atari's Jaguar Microarchitecture

In regards to (1), they can lease/finance them. As long as the $60 includes enough gross margin, and as long as they have enough borrowing capacity, they don't need $2000 * X laptops to start up.

Seems like a good relationship with their financing partner would be key.

Wow - that was asinine. Say what you will about Clinkle's mess (http://techwatching.com/tag/clinkle), no one's served well by wanton meanness.

Whats the advantage over financing such a purchase through any of the other number of means available?

"You basically have a whole bunch of cyber geeks trying to tout themselves as a monetary authority. That's just not going to fly."

Riiight. Because "cyber geeks" have never achieved any meaningful change in the world.

...but still no comments.

"So why aren’t we sharing that intimacy with the people in our real life circles?"

Offering compassion is a form of vulnerability for many; Secret and its ilk provide a "safe" way to do so.

"Snyder is proposing this as the actual mechanism of Huntington's, and they have shown, in human tissue culture and in mouse models of the disease, that supplementation with extra cysteine can stop or reverse the cellular signs of the disease."

Question mark or no, that sounds pretty positive. Anything that moves the eight ball on understanding the mechanism of a disease is good news.

"ANDREESSEN: It’s a little bit like dogs watching TV. It’s like, it’s all very interesting, but like whatever until another dog shows up on screen and then the dog freaks out. Economists, like this stuff is all like, whatever, technology, geek, nerds whatever and then “currency” is the flag. And so the minute the word “currency” shows up, all the economists perk up because if there’s one thing economists are all experts on it’s currency… And they look at it and they say, “Oh my god, people are paying $600 for this thing, it’s just a piece of fake digital currency, people have just lost their minds.” I don’t think that they are looking at the underlying substance."

Golden --- if a bit dismissive.

Its natural for entrenched systems to resist change, but as MtGox has demonstrated, the incumbents are not without their sources of value.

That was my first thought. MS or Google. Certainly moreso either of those than FB. At least there's some product & competency fit. For FB, it just seems like "we need something other than social, lets throw this at the wall and see if it sticks."

Who is next?

You would think that for compounds with such potentially far-reaching effects, there would be an expedited clinical trials program with informed consent from terminal patients, or something similar.