Hacker News: bitmapbrother

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Facebook keeps recommending political groups"

bitmapbrother — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 15:16:43 +0000

>Four days after the Jan. 6 insurrection

It's comedic how these far left wing publications continue to call it an "insurrection" when there were no weapons used and the only person killed was a woman that was assassinated by a trigger happy mall cop whose identity has still not been revealed.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Security Breach at US Universities"

bitmapbrother — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 20:37:00 +0000

When are you going to lift the shadow banning and post limiting on me? It's been how long?

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support"

bitmapbrother — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 05:27:40 +0000

>Qualcomm is only able to obstruct in this way because Linux doesn’t keep the kernel driver ABI stable for any fixed period of time.

The Linux kernel used by Android is based on the LTS version that now has 6 years of support [1]. So by the time an OEM releases a new device the support window will be about 4 years. Google has also been working to stabilize the Android kernel HAL so that OS updates don't require a brand new kernel [2]. Because of these developments Android devices can now offer 4 years of support [3].

>Windows Phone 10 was actually in a position to support phones for years and even got Qualcomm onboard. It’s a shame the platform was never competitive, and they’d burned all their goodwill on the 7 and 8 fiascos.

This is pure speculation and I highly doubt Qualcomm would have invested the time and money, to support a platform that had no chance of success, beyond their obligated 2 years of support at the time.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-users-rejoic...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-outlines-plan...

[3] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/treble-plu...

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Fairphone suggests Qualcomm is the biggest barrier to long-term Android support"

bitmapbrother — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 05:05:53 +0000

Qualcomm is allowing their GPU drivers to be updated via the Play Store. This started in 2020 so it will only apply to Qualcomm SoC's released from 2020 onwards.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "ZGC – What's new in JDK 16"

bitmapbrother — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:39:15 +0000

I would say Unreal is the biggest game engine in terms of pervasiveness. Also, isn't C# just used as a scripting language in Unity? All of the heavy lifting is dome by the C/C++ backend.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "ZGC – What's new in JDK 16"

bitmapbrother — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:08:34 +0000

>After reaching that initial 10ms goal, we re-aimed and set our target on something more ambitious. Namely that a GC pause should never be longer than 1ms. Starting with JDK 16, I’m happy to report that we’ve reached that goal too. ZGC now has O(1) pause times. In other words, they execute in constant time and do not increase with the heap, live-set, or root-set size (or anything else for that matter). Of course, we’re still at the mercy of the operating system scheduler to give GC threads CPU time. But as long as your system isn’t heavily over-provisioned, you can expect to see average GC pause times of around 0.05ms (50 µs) and max pause times of around 0.5ms (500 µs).

Very impressive and well done. Should Azul be worried?

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Crystal 1.0 – What to expect"

bitmapbrother — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 04:51:59 +0000

Isn't reference counting a form of garbage collection, though? If you want performance then Objective C and Swift aren't the languages you should be using. There's a reason why Apple recommends C/C++ if you need your code to run as fast as possible and also the reason why the high majority of professional games are written in C++ with either a thin Objective C / Swift wrapper.

Also, you can compile both Java and Kotlin to native images with Graal.

https://www.graalvm.org/examples/java-kotlin-aot/

New comment by bitmapbrother in "An update on Android's audio latency"

bitmapbrother — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 21:22:57 +0000

Perhaps you should read the article in full. It clearly says the most popular Android smartphones in 2021 are:

Samsung

Redmi

Oppo

Huawei

Vivo

Which probably account for the majority of Android smartphone sales.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Microsoft Azure suffers outage after cooling issue"

bitmapbrother — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 04:33:20 +0000

>I'm sure services I use run on all of the major cloud providers, but if that page was supposed to be enlightening, I only recognized one brand from the first page of customers.

So the first page was supposed to be indicative of all of the popular consumer facing services they host? Here, let me help you out: Spotify, eBay, Twitter, Apple iCloud, Verizon, Vimeo, Netflix, etc

>I refreshed a couple times, and sure, I saw more (on average 1 or 2) that I recognized on each page. But I don't think your response is particularly persuasive. Are you suggesting that the services that I use that run on AWS are in fact, not services I actually use?

What popular consumer services were on AWS again?

>Edit: Do you hold any Alphabet/Google stock? I've noticed your comment history trends toward dismissing criticism of Google, praising their products, and taking opportunities to speak about the flaws of their top competitors.

Do you own Microsoft stock? Because quote a few of your posts seem to praise their products and services. Do you work for them?

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Microsoft Azure suffers outage after cooling issue"

bitmapbrother — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 00:13:07 +0000

The biggest and most popular services run on Google Cloud.

https://cloud.google.com/customers/

You know....services consumers actually use.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "TypeScript at Google"

bitmapbrother — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 19:04:57 +0000

>How is dart superior to TS? This is so uninformed.

Speaking of uninformed...Dart is significantly faster for one. It's also not encumbered by being a superset to one of the worst scripting languages ever designed and, thus, does not have to deal with all of the baggage JavaScript brings with it.

>Dart is very poorly designed.

Amusing when you consider the clusterfuck that is JavaScript.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Java is still available at zero-cost"

bitmapbrother — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 05:05:00 +0000

The irony is that you probably use Windows - the world's most insecure, malware, virus and ransomware ridden OS in the world.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Google Data Collection research"

bitmapbrother — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 01:04:14 +0000

It would seem that you're the one missing the point. Microsoft was the very first company to sign up with the NSA way back in 2007. So when it comes to the mass collection of user data and spying - Microsoft is a pioneer in the field.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Google tracks your movements, like it or not"

bitmapbrother — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 03:11:08 +0000

What are you talking about? If you're a Windows user you're already in the privacy armageddon. And if the telemetry, which by the way can't be turned off, wasn't bad enough they're also operating a search engine and ad business that tracks people. And let's not forget that they also do a lot of business in China so they're also sharing their users data with the government. Microsoft has you covered with the anti-privacy trifecta.

As for the Windows 10 telemetry, during a Windows 10 install these are all of the things that are turned on by default.

Personalization

1. Personalize your speech, inkling input and typing by sending contacts and calendar details, along with other associated input data to Microsoft.

2. Send typing and input data to Microsoft to improve the recognition and suggestion platform.

3. Let apps use your advertising ID for experience across apps.

4. Let Skype (if installed) help you connect with friends in your address book and verify your mobile number. SMS and data charges may apply.

Location

1. Turn on Find My Device and let Windows and apps request your location, including location history and send Microsoft and trusted partners location data to improve location services.

Connectivity and error reporting

1. Automatically connect to suggested open hotspots. Not all networks are secure.

2. Automatically connect to networks shared by your contacts.

3. Automatically connect to hotspots temporarily to see if paid Wi-Fi services are available.

4. Send full error and diagnostic information to Microsoft.

Browser, protection, and update

1. User SmartScreen online services to help protect against malicious content and downloads in sites loaded by Windows browsers and Store apps.

2. User page prediction to improve reading, speed up browsing, and make your overall experience better in Windows browsers. Your browsing data will be sent to Microsoft.

3. Get updates from and send update to others PCs on the Internet to speed up app and Windows update downloads.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Google Censorship Plan Is “Not Right” and “Stupid,” Says Former Google Manager"

bitmapbrother — Sat, 11 Aug 2018 19:45:31 +0000

>They've plateaud while sticking to their values.

They earned 6 billion more in Q2 2018 than they did in Q2 2017. Like I said, to suggest they've plateaued while sticking to their values is ridiculous.

Alphabet reported revenue of $26.24 billion after accounting for traffic-acquisition costs, up from $20.91 billion in the second quarter of 2017 and higher than the average analyst estimate of $25.58 billion.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Google Censorship Plan Is “Not Right” and “Stupid,” Says Former Google Manager"

bitmapbrother — Sat, 11 Aug 2018 05:24:06 +0000

>Google is not happy with admitting they've plateau'd in their growth

Google made 8 billion in profit last quarter. To claim that they've plateau'd in their growth is ridiculous. Apple and Microsoft have been in China for some time and it would be foolish for Google, from a business perspective, to not do business in one the biggest markets in the world.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Introducing Android 9 Pie"

bitmapbrother — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 18:23:21 +0000

In the event you don't like the new gesture based navigation system you can always revert back to the traditional Back, Home, and Recents layout in settings.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Introducing Android 9 Pie"

bitmapbrother — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 18:20:35 +0000

>Aside from the unnecessary jargon, this irks me how it portrays the user as some passive consumer. It really drives home how Google is, first and foremost, an advertising company.

It's amusing that you're taking a quote from the Android Developer blog (a blog, you know, for developers) and trying to misconstrue it as a public facing comment for users.

Here's their public facing comment that is aimed at users:

Android 9 also helps you get things done faster with App Actions, which predicts what you’ll want to do next based on your context and displays that action right on your phone. Say it’s Tuesday morning and you’re preparing for your commute: you’ll be suggested actions like navigating to work on Google Maps or resuming an audiobook with Google Play Books. And when you put in headphones after work, you may see options to call your mom or start your favorite Spotify playlist.

https://www.blog.google/products/android/introducing-android...

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Introducing Android 9 Pie"

bitmapbrother — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 18:09:26 +0000

Pie seems consistent with their infatuation of the number and it just makes sense from a dessert naming perspective.

New comment by bitmapbrother in "Introducing Android 9 Pie"

bitmapbrother — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 18:05:17 +0000

Android P is available for the Essential phone[0] the same day as the Pixel. Technically, every device in that was enrolled in the Android P beta could have also had it day one.

[0]https://www.essential.com/