* Posts by anononononono

13 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2020

Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs

anononononono

Isn't this the reason smart tvs are so cheap? Any TV using android is sending stuff back to google, even if it isn't advertising directly (Or curating content just for you...)

I do have a sony bravia, which I really like, but I never go to it's homescreen anymore, it just uses the PS4 and I get all my content through that (Which no doubt also watches, natch, but is faster and less spammy). Youtube, netflix and plex (and most other content providers) all have apps for ps4

Swift tailored for Windows no longer folklore: Apple's programming language available for Microsoft OS

anononononono

Maybe I just interpret it like that, in that every time I forget one, the compiler gives me a warning, and that's it's much more aggressive over it than obj-c ever was.

Also, in obj-c when swift was released, nullability flags were really pushed and I started noticing how much of our obj c code was using optionals, and I don't like the uncertainty of it all.

I know it's somewhat easy to ignore, they just irk me.

anononononono

A few lines of code at a time, it's nagging influence can goad you into refactoring a bit and eliminating chains of dealing with optionals

anononononono

Optionals (marked by ?) are discouraged in swift, which I like, but there's still a lot of them around, especially in UIKit

Using it in that context will return the title of the rootViewController if the rootViewController is present, or nil and won't fail.

You could replace ? with ! to force unwrap, but that will crash at runtime should the rootViewController be unset.

I prefer to use guard let to unwrap the optional if it's present and proceed through the code

I actually like this *quirk*, and it's pretty strict on types too, I wasn't a big fan of Swift for a long time and still liked my Obj-c, but having just delivered a project using swift 5+, written in a very short amount of time I'm very much converted. It's much harder to write bugs into your code unless you really try, and has a lot of improvements over obj-c. That project is published and has only had 1 type of crash related to my code, where I went around Swifts warnings about playing with unsafe mutable data, now fixed.

Another reminder that bias, testing, diversity is needed in machine learning: Twitter's image-crop AI may favor white men, women's chests

anononononono

Re: Seriously?

If the image detection doesn't work, why use it? Why are you coming here to get all offended about reading an article and then complaining about people looking for reasons to get offended?

anononononono

Why not just put a disclaimer on tech that's only works for white men? Then you could safely say my tech only works for white men, and no one could accuse you of being racist or sexist

Apple takes another swing at Epic, says Unreal Engine could be a 'trojan horse' threatening security

anononononono

Re: "Apple would face incalculable harm"

Technologicaly savvy users are the loser, general consumers who don't have the insight to not install dodgy anti virus software from adverts tha bombards them from web pages, badly programmed apps, free kids apps that that are nothing but adverts, apps that track users through new and inventive means, etc. Not everyone works in tech and reads el reg. Having a smartphone should not require years of experience with computers, I get that devs hate apple, that doesn't mean it's bad for consumers

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

anononononono

Re: Wait a second ..

It's been expected

anononononono

Or bought 20 years ago...

If you can't understand how Instagram 'influencers' make millions, good luck with these virtual ones doing even better

anononononono

Re: How to be an influencer.

I do like techmoan, he's generally clear on paid promotions too, but I watch mostly for the old tech.

I was surprised to see some old unopened packs of blank minidiscs I had lying around are worth more now than when I bought them, was a bit of a mini disc fan but then went digital.

Eagle-on-EGLE* violence: American icon sends govt-flown drone hurtling into the waters of Lake Michigan

anononononono

Bees

n our daily course of supplying software for drone mapping, we test them regularly. We've only had one reported bird attack, but you'll notice in certain times of the year, nesting season I guess, in some areas birds will start to circle them, at which point we land.

More curious though was one very particular make of drone would attract bees, swarms of them, they don't stand a chance and the drones would land completely covered in bee guts, other bees still swarming around the thing. We stopped flying them on days when they seemed to be around.

Google to pull plug on Play Music, its streaming service that couldn't beat Spotify, in favour of YouTube Music

anononononono

Luddite

I do not trust these music subscription services because music can suddenly disappear down the memory hole for for licensing reasons, discontinued service or whatever, also, they give appalling returns to artists.

I still buy my music in complete albums and keep them locally in uncompressed format (backed up of course) and let itunes organise it. (Won't use the itunes cloud service either, tried it once and it rearranged a bunch of albums incorrectly, and don't like it automatically compressing my music for me).

Struggling company pleads with landlords to slash rents as COVID-19 batters UK high street. The firm's name? Apple

anononononono

Re: Mega corps such as Apple ...

Do they? I hear this a lot, that pensions companies own property and that's why it would be oh so terrible to make property prices reasonable again so we could afford them and spend cash on other things that would help the economy in many other ways for many people.

I'm thinking if my rent came down by 50%, I could easily make up the shortfall for my pension and have cash to spend, to go out and support other businesses.