Obviously, it needs to listen so it knows when you say, "OK Google." Also, it's trivially easy to turn off. Lastly, you can clearly see there's no Internet traffic (uploading of audio) unless and until you say, "OK Google."

Are you doing the same on all your smartphones, tablets, and laptops, too? Or are you just paid to write anti-Google posts? Does it pay well?

It goes without saying you're wearing a tinfoil hat to stop government mind control rays from getting into your brain, too.

How you got modded +5 is beyond me. Damn mods on crack again.

The web was kind-of sort-of another programming renaissance (of sorts), but as the years go by, I'm not sure such a thing as our beloved 8-bit years or the web will ever happen again. Software expectations are too high. Nobody is amused by simple text games anymore. Once in a while a retro graphics style game makes an impact but it's pretty rare and not much of an impact.

I fear those days are over, never to return.

And the deeply embedded malware included in just about everything from The Pirate Bay is just icing on the cake.

It may also result in less contributors / contributions. The company I work for contributes to open source, but only to open source with liberal licenses (e.g., BSD). The GPL is strictly off limits.

Such licenses have existed for a long time. They typically specify something along the lines of "free for non-commercial use" (which tends to imply "you have to buy a license to use the code in a commercial application").

The company I work for contributes to open source / free (little 'f') software, but only when the licenses are liberal in nature (e.g., BSD). The GPL is off limits.

I think that's one of the problems Perfect Forward Secrecy is supposed to solve. If I understand it correctly, upon connection, the two connecting systems that support PFS generate brand new and ephemeral public/private key pairs for bootstrapping the encrypted connection.

Since those keys are ephemeral, even if some entity collected all the data between the two connecting systems, it would never be able to decrypt that data, even with subpoena in hand: those keys are long gone, as they only existed for a few seconds before being wiped from memory.

Yeah, I agree that the page is confusing. It seems to contradict itself. My guess is they consider games a special case, or something.

A friend of mine does iPhone and Android development and his comment is that NDK is basically a requirement for any non-trivial games on Android.

A quote from the URL you linked to:

So, according to that page, the NDK is largely made available for performance.

The Mac mini looks interesting to me as well, to replace an older iMac.

However, I do think 4 GB of RAM is insufficient for all but the most basic usage (web browser plus one other application running). Apple really needs to upgrade their entry level RAM to 6 GB or 8 GB.

Ditto with the storage on their iOS devices. 16 GB doesn't cut it anymore. 32 GB of storage should be the entry level these days.

What makes you think people would reliably move to a better git than git?

The history of computing is littered with the carcasses of applications that were better than the competition, but never achieved much success for whatever reason (e.g., perhaps the competition got the first mover advantage, and that was enough to guarantee its dominance).

How does GPL being viral help? If it was BSD licensed, even after a Microsoft purchase, they couldn't un-BSD the BSD version, so it would still be available...

And a written language with just two letters in the alphabet is simple too, right? So, let's do that!

There's KISS and then there's KISS. C strings aren't the right kind of KISS.

I ran into a similar issue. (1) Very small circle of friends. (2) None of them interested in playing role playing games like D&D. (3) People get married, buy houses, start pumping out kids, and aligning schedules becomes near impossible.

You're not alone in being alone. I recommend something like an MMORPG where you can meet people and develop online friendships. My favorite has always been EverQuest.

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Excellent information; thanks! I had no idea such a thing existed. I wonder how many employers offer Roth 401(k) plans. I don't think mine does; then again, 10 minutes ago, I didn't know that Roth 401(k) plans even existed. Thanks for educating me. I should have looked it up before assuming it didn't exist; I'm sorry about that.

Indeed. This merits more investigation. Thanks!

I don't know what a "Roth 401(k)" is -- I've never heard of that before. My understanding is as follows:

Traditional IRA: Pre-tax contributions; money grows tax free; withdrawals are taxed; fairly limited yearly maximum contributions.

Roth IRA: Post-tax contributions; money grows tax free; withdrawals are not taxed; fairly limited yearly maximum contributions.

401(k): Pre-tax contributions; money grows tax free; withdrawals are taxed; sometimes employers contribute extra as a benefit; much higher maximum yearly contributions.