I think internally they have such a tool and use it in testing all the time. I don't predict them exposing it any time soon. It was released by accident, but pulled very quickly. And their changes to permissions on the Play Store go the opposite way.

Its also all legal C++. Just because it doesn't use the advanced features doesn't mean it isn't C++. I'd argue that for something this simple its even better code this way.

1)Not necessarily. Something as simple as not enabling that code for a month after release would get it by reviews. They aren't reviewing source code, they're reviewing behaviors. Just like you don't speed when there's a cop right behind you you wouldn't connect when you're being watched

2)They ask for a lot of permissions because the permissions aren't fine grained enough, and because polsih requires it. For example I had an app that did sound effects when you tapped a key. The OEM requested that we turn off sounds when the user is in a call so they wouldn't play on the other end. This reasonable request required a new permission (CALL_STATE IIRC), which actually gave us much more info than we wanted (we got to find out when calls started, ended, and the connection number which we didn't need). But if you just looked at our permissions your reaction would be "why do you need to know who I'm calling"? We didn't there was just no way to request less info, we didn't even look at the number.

One of the big problems was that Google redesigned the play store to be less scary and show fewer permissions. One of those was that any app could request internet permission without it showing up. That was just wrong.

What we really need is the ability to turn on and off specific permissions by app. Perhaps with the ability to limit internet permission to certain IPs/URLs per app. That would solve most of the problem.

Your math is just wrong all over. You're using the wrong formulas and confusing yourself.

If your monthly payment is 1000 and you pay an extra 50, you take 50 off the principle. That means next year you pay 50*rate less in interest for all years in the future. Assuming you don't change the payments (and assuming fixed rate loans), this means for the same amount of monthly money you pay off 50*rate more each year. That's a savings of rate compounded annually. That's all the return you get.

No, its still only the interest rate percentage return. That's what compounding does. Of course compounding works on other investments too- you reinvest your profits, either there or elsewhere. So its not a magical advantage of paying off debt.

Of course there's trivial costs in a business. If you're worrying about the costs of pens and whether you can get them 10 cents cheaper, you're wasting your time. If you're worried about the cost savings of turning the thermostat from 70 to 71, you're wasting your time. If you're worried about the cost of something that is less than 1% of your budget, you're wasting your time- even if you reduce it to 0 you'd have saved more by focusing elsewhere. A good businessman realizes whats worth being concerned about and what you just have to live with. Nothing is 100% efficient in life.

If you aren't in a position where you can gamble 120 dollars a year on your business, you shouldn't have a business. There's a reason why royalty deals are considered bad decisions for small businesses.

Card counting is keeping track of cards between hands in an effort to figure out altered odds on the current hand. For example, if you're playing single shoe blackjack and have seen 10 high cards out of 11 cards, you know low cards have a higher probability than normal.

That doesn't exist in Holdem, because there's no carry over between hands. Each is an individual event, with no altered probability from previous hands. You can calculate odds, but that's easy even for a human at holdem- if there's X cards which you think will give you the winning hand (called outs), your odds are X/47 on the turn and X/46 on the river, or just under 2% per out. For seeing both cards on the flop its 1-(47-X)*(46-X)/(47*46), or about 4% per out. Generally you just use 2% and 4%, as the nature of holdem makes it unlikely that percent or two you'd be off will make a long term difference.

So there are odds calculation. But there's no card counting. Also, card counting isn't the amazing thing some people think it is- if you don't play deep into a shoe, it isn't much of an advantage. In some games like baccarat its been mathematically proven to not give an advantage at all.

There are 2 poker games where it does help- razz and 7 card stud. This is because each player has a unique hand, including individual up cards. When they fold their hands are mucked. Remembering all the cards which were showing at any time is an advantage, as it can effect the odds of drawing to a straight/flush/full house. I would suspect a computer may have a big edge over beginners on those games due to that. But a pro at those games knows how to remember the dead cards already, I'm not sure it would be much of an advantage at high end stud.

There's no card counting in Texas Holdem. The deck is reshuffled after each hand dealt. Only 7 cards are shown to a given player, and all of them can be read at any time. There's no advantage to card counting, because you don't need to count. They may have some other card game they beat, but it isn't holdem.

No, it isn't. Or at least, it isn't by looking for tells. You win money by analyzing their betting pattern on this hand, comparing it to what makes sense, and putting them on a range of possible hands. One of those possible hands is always a bluff. Then you see what you beat of those hands, what beats you, and what your drawing odds are to improve and make a choice off that information. That is definitely something a computer can do. But the question is never "is he bluffing" its "is my hand strong enough and with sufficient odds of winning to be worth paying at the pot and implied odds this gives me".

Those are things a computer definitely can do.

More or less right. There's a few other considerations though.

1)Taxes. You aren't taxed on "returns" from lowering debt. You are on investments. You need to factor that in.

2)Risk. The risk of investments are different. The risk of stock is on the company (and sector, and economy's) performance. The risk of bonds is the company or government going bankrupt. The risk of paying off debt is you personally being unable to make debt payments in the future and losing your collateral.

3)Ability to cash out. If you pay off a car loan early, you can't cash that out (as the loan is likely more than the car is worth on the secondary market). If you pay off a mortgage, you have to sell the house to get the money back. With a stock, you can cash out at any time although possibly at a loss.

Except Agile would be even worse, as there's no way to keep the amount of communication lines an Agile project needs over the years. If you have a team of 100 programmers are you going to have the customer representatives needed at each engineering subteam meeting to make the proper choices? Not a chance in hell.

There's something in between the two that's better, but waterfall will do better in these cases than pure Agile.

THere's actually metrics for this that many internet companies report- Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users. The number of unique users that use the site on an average month/day. That's what smart advertisers (and investors) look at rather than number of signups.

Its a good value to pick up if you have some long term faith in the company. But any company where the CEO is making 70 million to lose money sounds way too much like the management is running it for their own benefit to me. I won't be buying.

The extra $20 is a broken window fallacy. Paying off 20 dollars of debt pays off 20 dollars of debt. They'd only be saving far more in the high interest case because they'd be paying far more. Either way they're losing money by paying higher interest rates.

Same with your overall interest rates. In the end, people have $X per month to spend on housing. They can't exceed that. No matter what they pay $Y in principle per month and $Z in interest per month. All that changes is the relative ratio of Y and Z. High Z, low Y and the money goes to the banks. Low Z, high Y and the money goes to the property owners. Of the two I know which I prefer.