The "one device, multiple contexts" thing I think rises above the tinkerer niche. But only if Canonical does it right.

Here's what I think would need to happen for Canonical to reach mainstream success:

1. They'd have to ship a powerful smartphone that can transform into a tablet or a laptop using a shell peripheral, as well as support a desktop experience using an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. That way one device can be your smartphone, tablet, laptop, and desktop all at once.

2. It would have to be an awesome user experience in all four contexts. All apps would have to have responsive designs capable of adapting to the context transforming while still dealing with the same user data.

3. OS updates must continue to work as they currently do in Ubuntu. I get them from Canonical. Cell phone carriers should not be allowed to be involved in the process for the same reason my ISP does not decide what updates I install on my desktop or laptop.

4. Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc have to not beat Canonical to it. MS already has the Surface product which is teetering in that direction, but isn't quite there yet. So we know the big players are interested.

What worries me is I think there's a good chance that Apple, Microsoft, or Google will deliver #1 and #2 first, which will kill Canonical's chances. But if miraculously Canonical did it first, I trust them to deliver #3. I don't trust their competitors to deliver #3. Least of all Google, sadly.

Android just isn't there yet for this. Not many existing phones can transform into a mouse/keyboard driven PC experience competently, and even fewer have a laptop dock capability.

And as you mentioned, the dearth of high quality desktop-caliber apps (like LibreOffice) is a huge problem that would need to be resolved as well along with the lack of a true window manager for a mouse-driven desktop experience.

Not to mention the update woes. Unless you buy a Nexus device or are willing to tinker with custom ROMs, the vast majority of Android phones don't get OS updates either 1. at all or 2. in a timely manner.

None of those problems are acceptable for a laptop/desktop OS experience.

Something tells me Ubuntu can be frankensteined into a competent mobile OS more easily than Android can resolve the above problems.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I'm cynical.

What benefit is there for an end user to buy it instead of, say, an Android phone?

The key value proposition to users is making your smartphone your primary (perhaps even only) computer by enabling you to to plug a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into it. And if they're really smart, they'll make a kick ass laptop dock for it so it can become a laptop too.

If they do that, then I'll be able to replace my wife's Android phone and her aging MacBook Air at the same time with the same device. She's not interested in faster hardware, but she'd definitely like not having to worry about sync'ing data between her phone and her laptop anymore.

If her phone and her laptop are physically the same device, then she can literally take her work with her at will in an effortless fashion without having to sync it with some clumsy cloud service first.

With the PS4 and the next Xbox coming out this year as well as the various Steam Boxes and the next round of high end GPUs for PC about to drop, the Ouya's brief appeal seems even less relevant.

Since none of those are open platforms, I think Ouya's appeal will remain quite relevant.

Combining the openness of Android with the user experience of a traditional console is pretty revolutionary. Both users and devs no longer being bound to the chains of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft could have a transformative effect on the industry.

Right now I'd say that Scrum is the biggest source of unnecessary meetings in this industry. I think the principles of agile development are great, but Scrum is a bad way to do it.

Weekly planning meetings, demos, retrospectives, and worst of all: daily standups at a rigid morning time. Not good for night owl engineers who want to sleep in or for early birds who get to work too soon before the meeting because it introduces a big context switch.

Instead of all these meetings, why aren't there more companies that just solve their accountability problems with tooling? My solution: Git + Bugzilla eliminates the need for all these meetings except the occasional demo.

Here's how:

Want to put a feature on the release calendar? File a bug. Want to prioritize features/bugs for an upcoming release? Fiddle with the bug priorities. Need input from an engineer about whether or not the priorities make sense based on dependencies? Meet with one or two senior engineers privately just on that topic. There goes all those massive planning meetings.

Want to know what someone is working on? Make all developers work in their own git branches. Ask developers to name their branches after the bug number they're working on. Ask the developer to commit their code daily, whether it's finished or not. That way anyone can check on their progress. When the developer finishes his task, merge the branch into master and close the bug. There goes all those redundant daily standups.

Cordova's API is the spec. When you target Cordova's API, you're targeting what will eventually be native browser APIs. Have a look here for more info: http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and-philosophy/

Wow your videos hit a bit too close to home for me! I drive down that road in your first video all the time. I've also been considering getting a dashcam for the same reason you have one. My only concern is finding one that doesn't require a lot of fuss. I'm looking for something that auto-activates when the car is on and shuts itself off when the car is off. Ideally it'd roll over the video too, only keeping a memory of the last X hours. That way I only have to do anything with the dashcam when I actually want to permanently archive some video when something notable happens.

It's not a nearby "solar system." The term Solar System is a proper noun, not a generic term. It's a nearby planetary system. I wish people (especially journalists) would stop getting this wrong.

The term "Solar System" is a proper noun, not a generic term. The term the article was looking for is "planetary system."

"Rate hike! Rate hike! Tra, la, la!"
- Palmer, Final Fantasy 7. Steve Ballmer's alter ego.

Perhaps they don't bother because the cost of entering an arms race would be too high. If any major site were to block adblock users, you would expect the plugin to quickly route around their attempts.

If I wanted to sabotage ad blockers, I'd just host my ads from the same servers as my content, since ad blockers don't really do anything aside from block ad servers. How would you route around that?

All ad blockers do is block common ad servers. They don't generally work on websites where the ads are hosted on the same server as the content because if the content and the ads are both coming from the same server then there's no reliable way to distinguish between the content you requested and the content you didn't.

Sometimes it can be done on a case by case basis by visibly blocking out regions of the page where ads normally appear, but that too can be easily thwarted by randomizing the placement of the ads.

All things considered, preventing ad blockers from working properly is far from impossible. It's trivially easy.

Yep, exactly. Preventing ad block from working is quite easy to do. Most sites don't bother because only a small minority does it and that small minority tends to be disproportionately made up of the kooky anti-consumerist crowd anyway, who aren't worth advertising to due to their hatred of advertising in general. If ad blocking ever went mainstream you'd see more sites tying content to ads explicitly.