Agreed. This ludicrous tendency to make devices slimmer and slimmer has to stop. At this point, adding 1mm of thickness could increase your battery life by 20%, even more. The frontal area is still the same so adding a bit of depth doesn't make the device any bigger visually.
Actually, I was contemplating supporting a few YouTubers with just that, 10$ a month or so and split it among the ones I liked. Then I read about the change in policy this week and I was like "Wait, this means I have to pay for *every* creator? Who came up with this nonsense?"
So that means no Patreon, simple. Sorry Big Clive, 8-Bit Guy and Today I Found Out.
It's not the feeds themselves, it's the continuous barrage of push notifications. Ever noticed how many sites want to enable them? I just say no.
At one point I realized that WordFeud was one of my greatest productivity killers. Every few minutes it goes bleep and you pick up your phone to place a word. Kil-ling! Nothing gets done! So I disabled all notifications, sounds and vibrate; the only thing left is the LED. Now I work for a while and when I take a break I'll see the LED flashing (or not) and have a little distraction. Then put the phone down and continue working. Do this for all your apps: WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, email, et cetera and you'll find peace and quiet. And yet, nobody has complained yet that I was late with replying, or that I missed a funny must-see video.
Yup. Started in 1993 with 2 boxes of floppy disks and I still use it today (Slackware, that is, not those floppies:)). I never switched from it and it is my day-to-day OS. I'm currently running a pure 64 bit version of Slackware.
The only naggle I have with it is that there is no easy upgrade path from version to version. I do upgrade software occasionally and I even use the package system from Slackware so that I can restore older versions of packages, if necessary. It also lacks dependency tracking so sometimes it's a bit of a hunt to find the correct set of packages. Other than that, it's very simple, transparant and robust.
We’re confident that as we continue to listen to users and provide updates to the app with new features and functionality, we’ll be able to keep improving the experience.
So the usual marketing blabla of "improving your experience". When, for crying out loud, is a company going to admit that they were wrong and going to reverse course??! Just for once, please. Just say "Oops, sorry. We hear you; here's the previous version." Now that would be really listening to your customers.
Post mortem? There are still tons of websites, even ones that are being developed and maintainted today, that use Flash to display videos. I very regularely see the message "This content can't be played with your setup." and if you dig deeper it's always a Flash plugin...
...because there is no standard voltage across all those devices. Heck, even the polarity (+ and -) is not universal.
Pick up 5 different devices (you ADSL modem, settop box, the speakers on your desk, the charger for your razor, your cordless phone base station, your security cam, et cetera et cetera) and you will find they all have different voltages. I've seen 5 volt, 7.5 volt, 9 volt, 12 volt, even 4.5 or 18 sometimes (the amperages don't matter in this case). As long as that is not fixed, a DC bus is pointless because you would still need a regulator.
The only somewhat 'standard' voltage is 5 volt from a USB charger. Unfortunately, that voltage is often too low for devices so you need both an ineffecient up-convertor and a lot of amps on that 5 volt line.
The kernel is outdated, but Arca Noae has released a lot of improved drivers, patches for ACPI, USB drivers (see the various updates) so it's not so dead as you think it is.
Just a city? What about for a whole country! Buiten Beter (Dutch for "Improve Outside") is something similar here in the Netherlands and has been around since 2010. I've used it a few times to report issues. It's a simple 4-step process, and after you report an issue you get an email. The only minor fault is that I've had issues reported as "Closed" when it wasn't yet fixed, but a few days later someone always showed up to fix the problem. I guess "Closed" means in this case "The department has reviewed your report and placed a workorder."
They may not accept credit cards due to the fees, but debit cards are accepted more and more widely, even in Germany. The difference is that a credit card provider will take a percentage of the sale (so cutting directly into your margin), while a debit card transaction may cost a small, fixed fee. It is not uncommon to see a minimum amount for plastic payments.
The Netherlands has a long history of PIN payments and they even encourage you now to pay electronically for small purchases (like a bread at the baker, a drink, a magazine) so apparently they have been able to drive down the price of plastic payments very low. For shopkeepers, the less coins and notes there are in the drawer, the better.
I suppose in the US shopkeepers collectively increase their prices to compensate for the credit card 'cut'.
The problem is, by the time you end up in court, you're usually way past any reasonable dispute resolution. You don't just go to court over a bad product, a failed warranty, a refund or bad service (at least not in the UK...). No, you have a fundamental problem that needs to be sorted out. And forcing the two complainants to be in the same room may actually help with that...
Actually, what I found out is that with most applications you spend an awful lot of code on fetching and displaying data. A typical web applications that uses a database comes mostly down to:
Fetch parameters
Build query
Fetch data
Do something with the data, like concatenating first name/last name, make a 'pretty' date, add totals (this would be the core functionality of that page)
Build HTML
Even when you use a framework this is still 90% of the code. There are some frameworks that allow for direct display of SQL queris but that is usually not possible because you have to do something to make the data *readable*. My all-time 'favorite' is dates; going from '2015-02-11' to 'February 11, 2015' and back.
Most recreational drones, like the one that crashed Monday, weigh only a few pounds and lack the power to do much harm.
So is about every bird in existence that flies (okay, most of them are under a pound, but there are a few larger ones.). What are you going to do? Shoot all birds down that cross the fence around the White House?
It's harder to push and often inadvertently invokes a scroll event. Plus, you need to bend your middle finger to push it in properly, otherwise you may perhaps click the left or right button as well.
To be honest, I think a mouse with side buttons is a better choice; and I don't really buy the 'dangling ring finger' argument; mine is always holding the mouse with the ring finger; my pinky is just below that, holding the mouse too. Unless you have really Rachmaninovian hands, there's no need for fingers to dangle.
These new rules apply to digital-only delivery. For physical objects (e.g. Amazon) you already paid VAT for the country of delivery. I don't know about Google, but I never saw Dutch VAT on my invoices for app purchases.
Some? We have 35 different VAT regimes here... And VAT changes regularely. Try to integrate that into your webshop.
The problem with this system is that it's backfiring. Yes, it is intended at the big companies who can pick a convenient country to pay taxes in. But it only hurts thousands and thousands of little mom-and-pop webshops who suddenly need to file extra paperwork, keep "2 reasonable proofs of location of the buyer" (Duh? Over the internet?) and must keep that information for 7 years (Hello! Security breach knocking at your front door!). So, to downloading a font, a game, or anything else purely digital, I now have to enter my address details into each and every shop. Why? It's a freaking download. Creditcard number should be enough.
Then there are 2 additional problems:
Having to explain to your customers again and again that the price changes depending on which country they live in (which was not the case before) and yes, because you live in country X you pay more than a customer in country Y.
"Country hunters", people who will simply fill in bogus information to get the lowest price.
Same goes for Europe. We've been working on SEPA for years now. I can already transfer money from my account to a different *country* in a matter of hours; within 2 years I should be able to pay online, with my own bank account, in a webstore in any SEPA country.
However, as I have recently had to deal with some of the, uhm, idiosynchronies of the American banking system, I can see that this system sounds as a radical improvement. But it's not the future, it's already here. Sorry.
So another quick-pay scheme, intended to snoop a few seconds off the time it takes to do a payment (and a few percent of the money..) Now if they would implement a quick-get-rich scheme the same way I would be all ears:)
I just got off the phone ending my cable subscription when I saw this post. Perfect timing:)
The reason is different, though. While I am not a customer of Time Warmer (different country), I realised that I wasn't needing it anymore. Or more precisely: there's nothing of interest on it for me. I watch perhaps 3 hour a month; the few things I want to see (mostly news, a few background programs) I can watch on free-to-air. So I'm saving about $20 a month now, which I might use for a cinema ticket or so.
I'm sure I'm not the only one... Perhaps there's more to cable-cutting than just rising cost.
Slashdot Mirror
So now I need a phone to tell me I'm tired? Wow, that's some serious progress.
Agreed. This ludicrous tendency to make devices slimmer and slimmer has to stop. At this point, adding 1mm of thickness could increase your battery life by 20%, even more. The frontal area is still the same so adding a bit of depth doesn't make the device any bigger visually.
Actually, I was contemplating supporting a few YouTubers with just that, 10$ a month or so and split it among the ones I liked. Then I read about the change in policy this week and I was like "Wait, this means I have to pay for *every* creator? Who came up with this nonsense?"
So that means no Patreon, simple. Sorry Big Clive, 8-Bit Guy and Today I Found Out.
It's not the feeds themselves, it's the continuous barrage of push notifications. Ever noticed how many sites want to enable them? I just say no.
At one point I realized that WordFeud was one of my greatest productivity killers. Every few minutes it goes bleep and you pick up your phone to place a word. Kil-ling! Nothing gets done! So I disabled all notifications, sounds and vibrate; the only thing left is the LED. Now I work for a while and when I take a break I'll see the LED flashing (or not) and have a little distraction. Then put the phone down and continue working. Do this for all your apps: WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, email, et cetera and you'll find peace and quiet. And yet, nobody has complained yet that I was late with replying, or that I missed a funny must-see video.
So instead of push, pull.
Yup. Started in 1993 with 2 boxes of floppy disks and I still use it today (Slackware, that is, not those floppies :)). I never switched from it and it is my day-to-day OS. I'm currently running a pure 64 bit version of Slackware.
The only naggle I have with it is that there is no easy upgrade path from version to version. I do upgrade software occasionally and I even use the package system from Slackware so that I can restore older versions of packages, if necessary. It also lacks dependency tracking so sometimes it's a bit of a hunt to find the correct set of packages. Other than that, it's very simple, transparant and robust.
So Microsoft finally commented:
We’re confident that as we continue to listen to users and provide updates to the app with new features and functionality, we’ll be able to keep improving the experience.
So the usual marketing blabla of "improving your experience". When, for crying out loud, is a company going to admit that they were wrong and going to reverse course??! Just for once, please. Just say "Oops, sorry. We hear you; here's the previous version." Now that would be really listening to your customers.
Post mortem? There are still tons of websites, even ones that are being developed and maintainted today, that use Flash to display videos. I very regularely see the message "This content can't be played with your setup." and if you dig deeper it's always a Flash plugin...
Rust 1.15’s most notable new feature is a revamped build system written in Rust and using Rust’s native Cargo package management.
So in order to build Rust, you must have... Rust. Chicken-and-egg omelet, anyone?
This year as well. I was there :P
Indeed. Especially teaser-sites that shows the heading but the moment you scroll down it pops up a paywall and starts playing music.
...I still have no idea what the bleep this is about. Am I the only one that can't make heads or tails of FOIA, brackets, layup and low post?
...because there is no standard voltage across all those devices. Heck, even the polarity (+ and -) is not universal.
Pick up 5 different devices (you ADSL modem, settop box, the speakers on your desk, the charger for your razor, your cordless phone base station, your security cam, et cetera et cetera) and you will find they all have different voltages. I've seen 5 volt, 7.5 volt, 9 volt, 12 volt, even 4.5 or 18 sometimes (the amperages don't matter in this case). As long as that is not fixed, a DC bus is pointless because you would still need a regulator.
The only somewhat 'standard' voltage is 5 volt from a USB charger. Unfortunately, that voltage is often too low for devices so you need both an ineffecient up-convertor and a lot of amps on that 5 volt line.
The kernel is outdated, but Arca Noae has released a lot of improved drivers, patches for ACPI, USB drivers (see the various updates) so it's not so dead as you think it is.
Just a city? What about for a whole country! Buiten Beter (Dutch for "Improve Outside") is something similar here in the Netherlands and has been around since 2010. I've used it a few times to report issues. It's a simple 4-step process, and after you report an issue you get an email. The only minor fault is that I've had issues reported as "Closed" when it wasn't yet fixed, but a few days later someone always showed up to fix the problem. I guess "Closed" means in this case "The department has reviewed your report and placed a workorder."
I cut the cord a year ago. Didn't bother with Amazon, Netflix or Hulu. I listen mostly to the radio these days.
They may not accept credit cards due to the fees, but debit cards are accepted more and more widely, even in Germany. The difference is that a credit card provider will take a percentage of the sale (so cutting directly into your margin), while a debit card transaction may cost a small, fixed fee. It is not uncommon to see a minimum amount for plastic payments.
The Netherlands has a long history of PIN payments and they even encourage you now to pay electronically for small purchases (like a bread at the baker, a drink, a magazine) so apparently they have been able to drive down the price of plastic payments very low. For shopkeepers, the less coins and notes there are in the drawer, the better.
I suppose in the US shopkeepers collectively increase their prices to compensate for the credit card 'cut'.
The problem is, by the time you end up in court, you're usually way past any reasonable dispute resolution. You don't just go to court over a bad product, a failed warranty, a refund or bad service (at least not in the UK...). No, you have a fundamental problem that needs to be sorted out. And forcing the two complainants to be in the same room may actually help with that...
Actually, what I found out is that with most applications you spend an awful lot of code on fetching and displaying data. A typical web applications that uses a database comes mostly down to:
Even when you use a framework this is still 90% of the code. There are some frameworks that allow for direct display of SQL queris but that is usually not possible because you have to do something to make the data *readable*. My all-time 'favorite' is dates; going from '2015-02-11' to 'February 11, 2015' and back.
Most recreational drones, like the one that crashed Monday, weigh only a few pounds and lack the power to do much harm.
So is about every bird in existence that flies (okay, most of them are under a pound, but there are a few larger ones.). What are you going to do? Shoot all birds down that cross the fence around the White House?
It's harder to push and often inadvertently invokes a scroll event. Plus, you need to bend your middle finger to push it in properly, otherwise you may perhaps click the left or right button as well. To be honest, I think a mouse with side buttons is a better choice; and I don't really buy the 'dangling ring finger' argument; mine is always holding the mouse with the ring finger; my pinky is just below that, holding the mouse too. Unless you have really Rachmaninovian hands, there's no need for fingers to dangle.
These new rules apply to digital-only delivery. For physical objects (e.g. Amazon) you already paid VAT for the country of delivery. I don't know about Google, but I never saw Dutch VAT on my invoices for app purchases.
Yes, there's some paperwork involved.
Some? We have 35 different VAT regimes here... And VAT changes regularely. Try to integrate that into your webshop.
The problem with this system is that it's backfiring. Yes, it is intended at the big companies who can pick a convenient country to pay taxes in. But it only hurts thousands and thousands of little mom-and-pop webshops who suddenly need to file extra paperwork, keep "2 reasonable proofs of location of the buyer" (Duh? Over the internet?) and must keep that information for 7 years (Hello! Security breach knocking at your front door!). So, to downloading a font, a game, or anything else purely digital, I now have to enter my address details into each and every shop. Why? It's a freaking download. Creditcard number should be enough.
Then there are 2 additional problems:
Same goes for Europe. We've been working on SEPA for years now. I can already transfer money from my account to a different *country* in a matter of hours; within 2 years I should be able to pay online, with my own bank account, in a webstore in any SEPA country.
However, as I have recently had to deal with some of the, uhm, idiosynchronies of the American banking system, I can see that this system sounds as a radical improvement. But it's not the future, it's already here. Sorry.
So another quick-pay scheme, intended to snoop a few seconds off the time it takes to do a payment (and a few percent of the money..) Now if they would implement a quick-get-rich scheme the same way I would be all ears :)
I just got off the phone ending my cable subscription when I saw this post. Perfect timing :)
The reason is different, though. While I am not a customer of Time Warmer (different country), I realised that I wasn't needing it anymore. Or more precisely: there's nothing of interest on it for me. I watch perhaps 3 hour a month; the few things I want to see (mostly news, a few background programs) I can watch on free-to-air. So I'm saving about $20 a month now, which I might use for a cinema ticket or so.
I'm sure I'm not the only one... Perhaps there's more to cable-cutting than just rising cost.