"Ditch PHP" is not helpful. First of all, ditch it for what? And why?

Node.js (Vue/React/Svelt (- really shiny!)...etc) seems to be the trendy thing (a.k.a. one of the "next shiny things"), yet JavaScript has historically had similar issues as PHP, but both have evolved to the point where any reason not to use either a five-ten years ago has probably been minimized today. (That said Node.js has introduced a whole new level of dependency hell which is a huge issue that only seems to be getting worse).
Or maybe you would suggest something along the lines of Go or Dart, which are built from the ground up for web development with many advantages, but that would require learning a new language and all the trapping that go with it (including potential infrastructure changes).

One of the biggest things, however... PHP, unlike any of the other options, runs stably almost anywhere including almost every web host everywhere. And for most projects this more important than anything else. Building a system in a fancy new language doesn't mean anything if you can't run it.

Bottom line... if it works don't break it.

BTW Larval has been around and is pretty stable, useful, and is well supported by many tools, so not necessarily the "next shiny thing". (Though last ground up PHP project I built I use Symphony).

BTW, I'm not saying there aren't better technologies out there, and if you can choose your infrastructure, learn all the new languages, and are building something from the ground up (or if you hit a roadblock with what you are currently using), by all means use them, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

The problem with that is that it interjects an obstacle to a functional web browser. Most people just want stuff to work, and as long as it does, they don't care. For those people, stopping them from just jumping in to use Safari to answer a question (in which I gather the majority would just pick Google anyway) is bad UI/UX. For those that actually care, it is in fact quite easy to change the default search engine in the Safari preferences.

Apparently this release has been blasted for omitting this and some other critical info as well...

The sites were specifically targeting Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China. (i.e. State sponsored hacking against Chinese minorities).

The specific iPhone exploits have apparently been patched (iOS 12.1.4).

These sites also targeted and exploited Windows and Android devices (funny how Google neglected to mention this).

A lot more info here: https://www.volexity.com/blog/...

Meltdown and Specter present a good illustration in the complexity of computer science and why no amount testing, or process, or methodology, etc. can solve all the problems.

Speculative execution is a performance feature, not limited to Intel processors. This was intentionally built into many modern processors (and in and of itself is really pretty cool).

At least it was a feature until it was discovered it could be exploited.

You can't test for every use case, because there is no way to anticipate every functional use case in a general purpose OS. The fact that you don't recognize that indicates you are way out of league here.

The book you site is a good book, but I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about who know what, because it's not worth my time. Besides the "making excuses for Apple's failings." seems to indicate this is more of fundementalist platform battle for you. You probably aren't really interested in facts here.

LOL. What a massive bunch of overly generalized proverbial nonsense. In a complex system (especially a fairly general purpose OS ecosystem) no matter what your process is, you can not test for every use case. Additionally, even Apple does not control it's whole ecosystem. For example, how does Apple's development process anticipate low level hardware issues like Meltdown or Spector? Seriously, nobody who has ever done this sort of thing would make such a statement. That's not to say that there aren't process issues (I'm pretty sure nobody has created a perfect process, and likely no one ever will, especially as long as people are involved). Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Or it could be...

Modern system development is complex in a way that most developers will never realize.
Finding the right balance between performance, economy, scale and security.
Dealing with hardware, software, and network issues, the didn't exist, were unknown, or unexploitable a few years ago.
Coordinating an ever changing ecosystem.

Even under Steve Apple had been known to step back and make releases that focused on exactly this type of stuff.

Not really obsolete for scientific and military applications. Solid state and digitial circuits are quite vulnerable to radiation, where tubes can survive EMP's and magnetism quite well.

BB King famously used Lab Series Solid State amps (not tube amps). He had used Fender Twins in the past but mostly the Lab's.

If you read the available information about this, there seems to be many procedures in place to avoid social engineering. Also, there is nothing here about anyone having access to any ones files or data (encrypted or otherwise). Just procedures which would allow one access to there own account, this would be akin to an automated password reset.
That said, a lot of the details about this are unknown.

http://connect.dpreview.com/po...

"Lumia" is awfully close to "Lumix" (and the too make phones with cameras).

I'd assume this is about Mac OS X, not iOS. Mac OS X market share is actually growing (though not even close to iOS in market share, or especially sheer numbers). The truth is it's very easy to leave the MAS, many key software products never went there to begin with for whatever reason.

There is evidence that *some* developers who tested the waters of the MAS are turning away from it. Rich Siegel (of BBEdit fame) has recently said BareBones may pull some/all apps from the app store (at least BBEdit, which makes since, nobody wants a sandboxed professional text editor).

You do realize this is because the missiles being fired into Israel are being fired from civilian areas.

This is but one thing that separates terrorists from soldiers... terrorists hide among the civilians using them as shields and propaganda.

There is little honor to go around on either side of this, but hiding among the civilians is an act of supreme cowardice and Evil.

Bzzzt... Actually some very excellent fixed focal length wide angle camera exist. Back in the "film" day most photog's I knew carried around Olympus SylusEpic's with the fixed 3.5 1:2:8 lens. Awesome camera!

Also see this: http://www.sigmaphoto.com/shop/dp2s-compact-digital-camera

A good fixed lens will beat a good Zoom lens in image quality every time.