Lots of things are pointers under the hood. But that's really irrelevant to the point.
Yeah, EVERYTHING is implemented at the base level in assembler, so pointers are in use everywhere. And I learned assembler first. But if that's your idea of where one should start, someone else can say we need to start with transistor theory, with just as valid an argument.
Pointers aren't required for most purposes. They're often just an optimization, frequently a questionable optimization. It's true that C pretty much requires pointers, but in C++ references can generally be substituted with greater clarity. Pointers are almost never used in Java (are they ever?), and certainly not in Python. Or many other languages I could name. (Yeah, they still exist "under the hood", but that's not the point of an exam of early or intermediate programming skill.) For that matter check out D https://dlang.org/ . That's a language that would be my favorite if they had a better way to document your code (last I checked Doxygen didn't do a good job) and it it had a slightly better library. (As it is I currently prefer C++ except for stuff that's heavy in unicode, where I'll switch to Python.)
C is actually easier than Java, though doing anything complex is harder.
A C++ subset doesn't have to be any harder than Java, and can be at least as capable. (The problem would be documenting it...and for students, learning to use only the subset.)
What's the storage *density*? I have the impression that grid scale batteries often use (relatively) low density storage, so they take up a lot of space. Lithium batteries are relatively high density (lots of storage/volume). Dense storage is, of course, part of what makes them so dangerous when they catch fire.
Perhaps it you wanted this to last through a blackout you'd need to give up your basement, rather than just part of it as with lithium batteries.
Unnh....there must be a reason Japan was researching whether uranium could profitably extracted from sea water. I believe that it was because decent ores for uranium were becoming scarce. (I used to know whether that was the reason they gave, but I can't certainly remember any longer....I think that was it though.)
I used to work at an outfit that had a big conference room, with big beautiful windows, that faced out across an airfield into a wooded area (good hiding places). In order to mitigate such optical surveilance, the windows were equipped with small piezoelectric speakers. Driven with (I'm guessing) white noise.
If I'm understanding the article correctly, the conference room window mitigation wouldn't work against this. It doesn't rely on vibrations of the windows. Instead, you'd just need a piece of paper inside the room, lit by ordinary lamps. As long as the light reflecting off the paper could pass through the windows unmodified (i.e. the windows provide clear visibility) the white noise vibrations of the windows would have no effect.
On the other hand, lightweight curtains that blocked the view through the window would stop this technique, but probably wouldn't significantly reduce what was detectable from a laser bounced off the windows (assuming no white noise).
You didn't read correctly.
I think we're talking past one another. I'll try to be clearer.
I said, that if you think Play is keeping you safe, nobody prevents you from only using *Play*.
Sure, but that's not the point. The point is that Android does prevent most users from using anything other than Play. Not by actually blocking them from using other app stores but by simply not offering the option. And that's a good thing, because most users have no idea how to decide whether or not something is safe.
I think perhaps the confusion here is because you and I are looking at this from different directions. You seem to be looking at it from the perspective of what you or I might want to choose. I'm looking at it from the perspective of an engineer whose job is to keep 3B users safe, most of whom have no idea how to make judgments about what is safe and what isn't. Keeping them within the fenced garden (it's a low fence, but still a fence) allows them to do what they want without taking much risk. The fact that the fence is easily stepped over preserves the freedom of more clueful and/or adventurous users to take greater risks. I think this has been a good balance.
And while you are usually (not sure for all manufacturers) not prevented from using other stores
I'm pretty sure that the ability to allow unknown sources is required by the Android compliance definition document, and that a manufacturer who disables it is not allowed to call their device Android, or to pre-install the Google apps or Play.
Google does a few things to make it uncomfortable. Trusting the store is a one-time thing, but you still have to acknowledge every app install twice and updates require confirming you really want to update the app, while Play can update apps in the background, optionally without even notifying you.
Until Epic decides that they want their store to be able to install and update as seamlessly as Play can, and gets a court to order that. Still, your point is valid, there is still some friction for other stores. Is it enough? I guess we'll find out. Will it be allowed to remain? I guess we'll find that out, too.
How much could it possibly be costing them to keep this service alive... they could have it in a holding pattern for another 15 years and then kill it when its really no longer being used and it would cost them pennies.
goo.gl links are a significant abuse vector, so Google has to maintain a non-trivial team to monitor and mitigate the abuse. I'll bet there are several full-time employees working on that, and that the total annual cost is seven figures.
Even if it weren't an abuse vector, the nature of Google's internal development processes mean that no service can be left completely unstaffed. The environment and libraries are constantly evolving, and all the services require constant attention to prevent bit rot. A fraction of one engineer would probably be enough for something like goo.gl if it weren't abused, but that's still six figures per year, not pennies.
Nobody prevents you from only installing stuff from Play.
This isn't true for the vast majority of Android users. To a first approximation, all Android users are using devices that have "unknown sources" disabled, so they can only get stuff from Play. Of course, it's trivial to find out how to enable unknown sources and install stuff from other places and I'd expect that nearly all slashdotters who use Android have at least experimented with that, even if they don't use f-droid or whatever on a regular basis. But slashdotters are not remotely a good representative sample of Android users.
I mean for other software you probably also have a selection of sites you trust and avoid others.
If you're talking about desktop/laptop software, sure... but most Android users don't use a desktop or a laptop and are accustomed to expecting that anything they can install is safe. And even among those who do use a non-mobile device, people expect mobile devices to be safer, because they are. This court ruling may change that, to some degree. The result will probably be good for Apple, since Android insecurity will drive people to the safety of Apple's walled garden.
I mean, the ultimate way to ensure your protection would be to place you in a padded room with a straight jacket and never let you out.
Delegating security decisions to users is the best way to ensure that users have no security. I'm all for enabling users who understand what they're doing to make their own choices and are willing to accept the consequences, but the vast, vast majority don't understand security or the consequences of their security decisions, especially not in the face of clever attackers who are quite good at making malware appear completely innocuous. Even a knowledgeable security professional can't reliably distinguish malware from a legitimate app, not without deep and very specific expertise, and not always even then, and you think your grandma can?
There are three billion Android devices in the world; it's used by approximately 1/3 of all people living, and they put a lot of very important information about themselves in their devices. Android platform security decisions have enormous consequences. Android has gradually gotten more opinionated about user security because we've found time and again that if you ask users, they don't understand the implications and they make bad choices.
Many people think that the existence of unlockable bootloaders and the developer options are bad choices and suggest that we should push the Android ecosystem into the Apple model of closed, locked-down hardware and a closed app ecosystem. I disagree, and I've worked hard to make sure that the ability of people to run the software they want on the hardware they own is not restricted. For example, I have regular meetings with the leaders of various Android ROMs, including Lineage, Graphene, Calyx, etc., to help them navigate the security hardware changes that we make. This isn't something I do because my management tells me to, it's something I do on my own because I think it's important.
User freedom is deeply important to me... and so is user security, but these things are in tension. To a first approximation, increasing one decreases the other. IMO, Android has struck the right balance. By default, devices are locked down and software comes from a controlled source, but users who know what they're doing have the right and ability to remove the restrictions (mostly; low-level firmware is locked down -- I would like to see Android gain a "dev screw" capability like ChromeOS to completely open it up in a safe way). This court ruling seems likely to upset that balance in a direction that endangers users who don't know what they're doing -- and it doesn't provide any additional capabilities to users who do. It's all risk, no benefit.
Even more so if your disclosure is real.......
Try a web search for my username and "Android". Or look for "swillden" in the AOSP codebase and commit logs. Seriously, why would you imply that I'm lying when it's extremely easy to verify? And if you think that I made up a
There's no reason to subsidize imported goods which is what this program had become.
You have an odd definition of "subsidize".
Seems like the script kitties
The phrase is "script kiddies", meaning young guys who know how to execute a script but don't understand how it works.
"Script kitties" is a funny visual, though. Thanks for that
Google does a much better job of policing the Play store for malware than most third party app stores do
A logical equivalent to your sentence is that some third party app store do a better job than Google. That alone is an argument to allow the third party stores. People are not obliged to use them, but at least they have a choice to have better than Google.
Very, very unlikely -- the resources required to do good malware detection at any sort of scale are enormous -- but also irrelevant. The issue isn't what the best app store does, it's what the worst does. Users who would choose an app store because it does extremely good vetting are users who would be careful what they install regardless of how careful their store is. It's the users who aren't cautious that will be harmed by Google being required to give them access to many app stores.
AltaVista gave me more accurate results than Google ever has, much less recently. But you did need to use reasonable logic, and "near" was an important addition.
Google was easier to use. That was their sole advantage.
The assertion is that it does more than that, that it allows to systems to be remotely disabled.
OTOH, I've read of precisely such a feature being requested by some who were fearful of AI, so it's not unbelievable (though it would clearly need more than one chip to accomplish this).
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
