You can actually add Regex literals to Swift at compile time with a type extension and a type annotation.

Guard is just syntactical sugar around an if statement. It's nice, I guess, in that it helps to enforce better programming practices, but it's not anything particularly interesting.

Well... the main difference between a `guard` and an `if` is the former can bind names in the enclosing scope, and crucially, fail upon failure to bind, which is a thing in Swift. This is a somewhat peculiar behavior. It's meant to eliminate the standard Cocoa/Foundation habit of putting a bunch of parameter assertions as the beginning of the function and to handle these in a regular way that the compiler can make assumptions about. "Not particularly interesting" stuff has a way of being boring to the programmer but is conversely fascinating to the compiler.

Go, on the other hand, implements multithreading as communication: if thread A writes to a channel, and thread B reads from it, thread B will wait until thread A has its value ready. This is the main feature that makes Go so useful for server applications.

If you know Erlang, Go is Not Particularly Interesting. "Pretty much the only thing" that sets it apart is Google is pushing the language.

In the age of cheap body fat % measuring devices,

I have one of these in my scale. I like the idea of it, but it's not remotely specific, the number varies +-20% daily (and this is in the context of a total body water reading that varies by maybe 2% daily). Building up a long history with a moving average might be defensible but I still feel like the "cheap" solution is for entertainment purposes only.

Hydrometry: accept no substitutes.

Can you characterize exactly what you think makes iOS slower to iterate? I've been doing comparisons lately.

Isn't it up to the library developers to publish bindings?

A LOT of Apple people use Ruby and Apple developed/supported an OSS build system for native Ruby apps only a few years ago.

I think they finally went with something different because (1) the various Ruby byte code/compiler options have never been able to deliver, (2) they may have wanted something with a static type system and no GC by default, and (3) Lattner initiated Swift because he wanted to write it, and he wrote it as an exercise at maintaing Obj-C compatibility, and it was the right tool at the right time.

How can it tell the difference between a response...a change in the state of something in the room...and a change in the object composition of the room itself? Without directionality, I don't see how it's possible.

You create a baseline for the null or empty room, either by capturing the room empty or by creating an average of a few nights' observations.

Transfer functions don't relate to spatial localization, they're different ways of figuring out directionality and both are independently reliable. Our heads use spatial localization (two ears) to detect the azimuth of a sound source, from both relative level and wavefront arrival time, but we determine the altitude of a sound source with transfer functions related to the shape of our heads and our outer ear structures.

This is why the Music and Movie industries need to die -- no risk takers too many assholes looking for a "sure thing" and will rehash the "sure things" right into the fucking ground till they have nothing left.

I suppose the alternative is better, where Netflix and Google front-run your concept and actor preferences within a millimeter of their mathematical certainty, and then regurgitate that back at you, until they run it into the ground etc. etc.

I don't know, most feature films are original or original adaptations, you just don't hear about them because they get narrow releases or debut on VOD. Go to Apple trailers sometime and count the number of original films versus the number of sequels, you'll find the former easily outnumber the latter.

Don't pin the crimes "studios" or Disney executives (and they're by far the worst offenders) on the "industry."

From the summary Tron:Legacy grossed $400 million from $170 million - that's a success even by Hollywood "hide the profits to avoid royalty payments" maths.

Profits are not used to compute royalties. Royalties are not dividends.

"Market value, by definition, is what somebody is willing to pay."

Therefore it is impossible to overpay for something, as long as you're willing! :)

"Market value" in this meaning only applies in aggregate given the prior assumption of a liquid market. Is their a liquid market for autonomous car researchers?

You can't really apply commodity economic laws to "rockstars" like CEOs, entertainers or top researchers; when there's only one or a few of anything prices are more the result of rentierism and Veblen effects.

What good is going to do any of us if these guys end up working for Uber for 5 years, producing no useable products, and in the process destroying our best university autonomous vehicle program? Is that efficient? Or did Uber just have a huge checkbook and such a small marginal value for dollars they were happy to blow a few million dollars to slow down Google and Apple, with the completely speculative objective of maybe developing some product at some point.

It makes no sense to speak of market value when someone has so much money they can simply buy the best of everything and let it burn just to deny the other barons (er, capitalists) the prize.

(I really do think Uber has absolutely no idea what they're going to do with these people and zero wherewithal to run a R&D organization. This was just the rich parvenu buying the most expensive caviar to impress his friends...)

No they need at license to do that for any purpose. You want to send a link to someone for a picture you have in Google Photos? If someone follows that link that's a public display and Google needs a license to show the picture to them or else it is a copyright violation.

Copyright doesn't work like that, if you send a link to someone you are the one making the copy, not Google. All of the technical operations Google performs on your behalf are copies you are making, with Google as an agent; if you distribute a copyright image this way, you're the one that's liable, not Google, they're safe-harbored.

The relevant statute is Title 17 USC Section 512, the Transitory Network and System Cacheing safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. A service provider, like Google, may pass copyrighted works on the network, manipulate them and cache them without incurring any civil liability.

With regard to Tron 3, it's not so important that Tron 2 bombed-- what really matters is Escape from Tomorrowland bombed, and Disney has decided if it's going to make fantasy films, it'd rather plow money into it's wholly-owned subsidiaries, Lucasfilm and Marvel.

America, you will be getting all your science fiction and fantasy in Avengers form in Galactic Basic. This is a win if you like big scifi movies that make billions of dollars, it's a loss if you liked a little bit of diversity in your movies. Disney will now double down on sequels and reboots.

Think of everything people expect a photo hosting service to do. How to you think you can legally do them without those permissions?

The demands they make are ridiculously broad, not only do they ask for the right to take anything you upload and repurpose it in whatever way they please, they even demand this on the part of their partners, "those we work with." A picture (which you thought you deleted) of you and your ex-girlfriend at the zoo appears on a Samsung phone in an ad? Covered under the agreement. Can you tell me any other photo sharing service that demands this?

Apple's language on this point is instructive:

2. Changes to Content. You understand that in order to provide the Service and make your Content available thereon, Apple may transmit your Content across various public networks, in various media, and modify or change your Content to comply with technical requirements of connecting networks or devices or computers. You agree that the license herein permits Apple to take any such actions.

That's it, that's all you need.

Really important point: someone who holds media for someone else doesn't need to obtain any kind of license. You only need a license if you want to be able to make copies of something and put them in public for your own purposes.

Pftbt, I'd be impressed if any Google service lasts 20 years.

Just because they shut down Reader doesn't mean they threw the dataset away.

If you bought an iPhone last quarter, your Apple Tax was $252.

You can't see it in terms of cost-plus, you have to see prices in terms of marginal utility and premium over supplemental good. If an iPhone and a Galaxy S6 do the same thing, and the ASP of the Galaxy is $6 less, that's the baseline.

So then you can either say, either the Apple Tax is $6, or the Samsung discount is $6. And then you have to ask why exactly is Samsung selling phones short when they (putatively) have the same value? And why does Samsung even bother selling phones at the bottom of the range if they lose money on every sale? And if Apple is able to turn their profit over costs into marketing that buys them significant pricing advantage, why can't Samsung do the same thing?

If Google made a requirement that device makers provide "No Bullshit" builds of the OS for their devices (no TouchWiz, no bloatware, no crap) and made the carriers agree to allow for the use of that firmware set I think Android would be better off.

If Google did this, Samsung would pull out of the OHA and switch to Tizen. If Samsung did this, Android's marketshare would collapse, particularly in the US and at the high ranges where the app developers and ad buyers live.