I find it really ironic that Google, a company so used to being the new hotness upstart company, is so willfully ignoring usage patterns of a significant minority comprising "the youth" and people on the wrong side of the internet divide, and much of the third world, and anyone without a data plan outside of wifi range.

It's you that's out of touch. Kids don't use SMS like they used to, it's all about apps like Snapchat now. And most kids don't generally care about calendar reminders either.

As for people without data plans, Google are inventing record-breaking new technologies like Loon precisely to reach these people. They are about as far away from ignoring the problem as you can possibly get.

Personally, I use sms to ensure my kids get the notification no matter what

Nope, SMS doesn't achieve that, it needs a signal at the point at which the notification is received. Whereas an app that generates local notifications only needs to sync the event once. The app-based method is much more reliable.

If general AI is made, there's no reason to think it will have a motivation structure that agrees with humans

Of course there is. If it didn't do what the developers want it to, then the software would be broken and development would continue until it did do what they wanted.

I would expect that for most apps, it won't reduce power consumption.

Why would you expect that? What apps will be able to do will be extremely curtailed - e.g. they will probably follow the original iPhone model of halting the process whenever the user isn't using it. Aside from the display, the radio is probably the biggest power draw on the system, plus there won't be any length negotiation with the phone, so having non-background applications run directly on the device will probably help battery life, not harm it.

For a watch where a regular watches battery lasts years, a watch with a battery life of a single day at best is hilariously bad.

But nobody needs a watch battery to last years though - the comparison is meaningless. People don't use their watches while they sleep - charging every night in exchange for the extra functionality is a good deal for most people.

If a brand new one has only 30% at the end of the day, a year from now (or an OS update, whichever happens first) you'd better get used to charging your watch at lunch.

You're being ridiculous. No OS update or battery degradation over a year is going to reduce the capacity to less than half. The battery itself is is rated to retain 80% capacity for a thousand cycles and battery tech is pretty predictable.

why would Apple keep such a thing quiet

Because it's a sealed diagnostic port for a non-end-user serviceable product, not a feature. They aren't wishing anything up, it's just not something they have a reason to publicise.

when the Apple Watch's battery-life isn't what most people would consider impressive?

Actually, people's opinions on this are very mixed. Some people are reporting great battery life and improved battery life on their iPhone as well as they switch the screen on less. Some people report the opposite. Chances are, people who have just got a new gadget are playing with it all day, which obviously isn't representative of normal usage patterns or battery life.

Apple's lack of transparency here doesn't much matter, though

Why are you describing lack of publicity about a sealed diagnostic port for non-end-user serviceable goods as a "lack of transparency"? That is bizarre. You wouldn't expect that for any other company, let alone Apple.

The Apple Watch has pretty severe resource constraints to fit into such a small package. At the risk of oversimplifying things, current third-party Apple Watch applications are essentially remote iPhone displays, so they aren't going to perform amazingly well.

As developers learn how to work with this new platform best, things will improve. Also, Apple have already said that they are going to open up the SDK further to allow for applications truly running on the watch itself, which will be a big improvement. My guess is they'll open that up in a couple of months at WWDC.

in order to make native Apple apps to seem better.

That makes no sense. They don't achieve anything if their apps look better than the other apps on the device, they just make the entire experience worse. It would be like cutting off their nose to spite their face.

These days you don't see the same hype around microkernals that you did back then

No, but they are still in use. HURD, FreeBSD, OS X, and iOS all use the Mach microkernel to some extent.

Yeah, I have to explicitly allow it, that's awfully nice of them. But how long will opting out last when the advertisers realize they can force a few more eyeballs?

You realise that it's the browser vendor that decides this, not the website, right? Do you think it's only a matter of time before browsers remove their popup blockers as well?

It's also opt-in, not opt-out. The system doesn't work unless the user grants permission. It doesn't work automatically until the user switches it off.

The displays cost significantly more than a more typical 1080p or 1440p display, so they'll probably only make it into high-end phones.

It's not just the monetary cost that you have to consider. How much power does it take to drive these displays? High end phones might have more room in the profit margin to account for the higher monetary cost, but they are still subject to the same power constraints as cheaper phones.

they're also the country least successful in preventing the sexual exploitation of children.

You'd have to be delusional to believe this. The UK is a developed nation with an operational police force. That alone is enough to put it miles ahead of some countries.

Absolutely and evidence of this is always only a Google search away. Search on how to do something with a database and the results you get are riddled with things like SQL injection vulnerabilities, even when the source of the official documentation.

To follow on from this: Language Community Litmus Test: Database Placeholders. An informal survey shows PHP joint bottom, with all but one of the top 5 hits for "PHP database tutorial" promoting insecure methods.

And, as you mention, the official PHP tutorial had beginner-level security holes in it for YEARS. The whole community is riddled with this crap.

Blaming the language for bad code is asinine.

This is bullshit. A shitty language promote shitty code. Aside from the whole taking pride in your work and other "soft" effects, in PHP's case, there are several big, concrete instances of this happening.

For example, older versions of PHP were obviously designed without any clear understanding of how a web request operates. So, for example, you'd have SQL escaping happening in the input layer rather than at the database layer. Nobody who understands what they are doing would design something to work that way. But the core PHP devs totally fucked up in the beginning. They have since started to pull this crap out of PHP, but take a look around. Big, widely-used PHP packages like CodeIgniter have replicated this topsy-turvy design fuckup even in recent versions. That's no coincidence - that's inherited from PHP's design flaws. The blind led the blind into hell, and this crap permeates the PHP developer community as a result.

Likewise with the cavalier attitudes towards correctness. Error handling, character encoding, testing, release management, things like that. Where PHP fucks up, the community is sure to follow. The low quality of PHP has a direct negative effect on the code its fans write.

I'm fed up with the equivocation PHP fans trot out whenever any criticism heads their way. Yes, the quality of a language really does have an effect on the quality of the code you write with it. This is plain for anybody to see, and if you don't see the difference in quality, then you should seriously question your competence.

...if you have the financial resources to afford to crash and burn

That's implied in the name "moonshot". If budget is a constraining factor, then what you're attempting isn't a moonshot, but standard R&D. It's the difference between a Boeing exec. deciding to fund the development of a better plane and JFK saying "get us to the moon no matter what".