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williamDafoe commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android   9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat
giancarlostoro · 5 days ago
> Android shouldn't be considered Open Source anymore

That idea died for me long ago, I had used Android since 2009 till 2020. I gave up on the dream of a Linux phone. Ubuntu had a nice sleek Phone UI they were working on. The issue is if nobody builds the phones and no carrier cares, nobody will pick it up. You need to push yourself into the market.

Microsoft could fill this weird gap if they wanted to the key things would be they would have to truly open source the OS. I could see Amazon trying again, but they'd need to invest a lot as well. It's an uphill battle needing a serious flagship phone. Your other problem is most apps need to be migrated.

williamDafoe · 4 days ago
Open source is a relative thing. Compared to iOS, Android is "incredibly open source!"
williamDafoe commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android   9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat
mike_hearn · 5 days ago
Banks have never accepted browsers. They don't need to because they can require the web app be paired with a mobile app or SMS code to log in. Before they used mobile apps they issued smartcard readers (at least they did everywhere I lived). The smartcard readers were also used to digitally sign transactions.

In other words, there aren't many banks that let you take sensitive actions with just a browser and that's been true since the start of online banking.

These days they also apply differential risk analysis based on the device used to submit a transaction and do things to push people towards mobile. For instance in Switzerland there's now a whole standard for encoding invoices in QR codes. To pay those you must use the mobile apps.

Edit: people are getting hung up on the "never accepted browsers" part. It means they only use the browser for unimportant interactions. For important stuff like login or tx auth, they expect the use of separate hardware that's more controlled like a SIM card/mobile radio, smartcard or smartphone app. Yes some banks are more lax than others but in large parts of the world this was always true since the start of online banking.

williamDafoe · 4 days ago
Is wells fargo not a bank? It doesnt even use 2FA and you can log via a browser in a ship money all over the planet!
williamDafoe commented on Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?    · Posted by u/stephenheron
yaro330 · 5 days ago
> Apple Silicon is 2-4x more efficient than AMD and Intel CPUs during load while also having higher top end speed.

This is false, in cross platform tasks it's on par if not worse than latest X86 arches. As others pointed out: 2.5h in gaming is about what you'd expect from a similarly built X86 machine.

They are willing due to lower idle and low load consumption, which they achieve by integrating everything as much as possible - something that's basically impossible for AMD and Intel.

> The faster the CPU can finish a task, the faster it can go back to sleep, aka race to sleep.

May have been true when CPU manufacturers left a ton of headroom on the V/F curve, but not really true anymore. Zen 4 core's power draw shoots up sharply pass 4.6 GHz and nearly triples when you approach 5.5 GHz (compared to 4.6), are you gonna complete the task 3 times faster at 5.5 GHz?

williamDafoe · 4 days ago
I did mips per watt calculations in 2017 and Apple (A10 i think) was 2-3x better than intel. See "how to build a computer" by donald gillies (slideshare slides). I was shocked, i didnt expect this at all!
williamDafoe commented on Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?    · Posted by u/stephenheron
ben-schaaf · 4 days ago
This is easy to disprove. The Snapdragon X Elite has significantly better battery life than what AMD or Intel offer, and yet it's got the same number of cooks in the kitchen.

> Perfect example is trying to get to the bottom of why your windows laptop won't go to sleep and cooks itself in your backpack

Same thing happens in Apple land: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44745897. My Framework 16 hasn't had this issue, although the battery does deplete slowly due to shitty modern standby.

williamDafoe · 4 days ago
X Elite is not better than Ryzen5. Not better at all! Its why i own a hx365 AMD laptop...
williamDafoe commented on Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?    · Posted by u/stephenheron
gowld · 5 days ago
Apple has been vertically integrate for 50 years. Microsoft has been horizontally integrated for 50 years.

That's why Apple is good at making a whole single system that works by itself, and Microsoft is good at making a system that works with almost everything almost everyone has made almost ever.

williamDafoe · 4 days ago
The 2019 Macs were vertically integrated and Apple could do NOTHING good with the Intel PowerPig i9 CPUs. My i9 once once ran down from 100% charge to 0% in 90 mins PLUGGED IN ON 95W CHARGER! I was hosting a meeting. The M1-M4 CPUs forsake multithreading and downclock and this is one of the many ways they save power. Video codecs are particularly power efficient on mobile chips!

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williamDafoe commented on DARPA program sets distance record for power beaming   darpa.mil/news/2025/darpa... · Posted by u/gnabgib
williamDafoe · 2 months ago
This will come in handy when DARPA builds the Phaser Cannon used to blast the Talosian fortress under the direction of Number One in the 23rd Century ...
williamDafoe commented on Stack Overflow is almost dead   blog.pragmaticengineer.co... · Posted by u/Jerry2
williamDafoe · 3 months ago
I always considered stack overflow to be a Band-Aid placed on top of a mistake! The mistake was always poor documentation by the original system designes, and a policy of not allowing edits to the system design doc! And the more mistakes a documentation person makes, the larger the stack overflow corpus!

Now ChatGPT for SO is a Band-Aid on top of a Band-Aid on top of a mistake!

I really don't believe in the elitist policy to qualify for being able to answer stack overflow questions ... Whenever I have a better answer than all the existing ones stack overflow says I'm not qualified to answer so shut up! To hell with SO - I answer more questions at my company than anybody else and SO is run by elitst fools ...

williamDafoe commented on Stack Overflow is almost dead   blog.pragmaticengineer.co... · Posted by u/Jerry2
bawolff · 4 months ago
I think these sorts of things are just an unfortunate side effect of scaling. The bigger you get the more people get lost in the bureaucracy. However if you don't build up the bureaucracy the system collapses under its own popularity.

Wikipedia has a similar issue where editing declined around 2007, which is often blamed on stricter enforcement of rules, more complex rules, etc. I think its just a natural stage of growth. You can't be a free for all forever.

williamDafoe · 3 months ago
Two thirds of the wikipedia article i wrote in 2003 have been deleted by rabid editors. It was a biography of my father, written based on interviews with my mother. I have found that restoring any of the rabid editor deletions results in threats of me being banned from editing my own article.
williamDafoe commented on How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?   twitter.com/dieworkwear/s... · Posted by u/taubek
subsubzero · 5 months ago
I see what you are getting at but I have to disagree with alot of what you are saying.

> the US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now

The US and UK are totally different animals at the height of their "empire". The UK currently has little land and alot of it is devoid of minerals(sans coal). They achieved most of their might subjecting other countries and extracting resources from their colonies. Once the colonies and the rest of the world objected the British empire began to crumble as the colonies broke off from the UK.

Contrast that with the US which if it were to jettison its "colonies" (Puerto Rico, Samoa etc) you would see very little drop in GDP. The US has vast swaths of land which is excellent for farming, energy extraction and contains valuable minerals. It has widespread and diverse populations with wildly different ecologies and climates. In addition to a huge amount of resources it has a kings ransom of some of the best universities in the world(stanford, harvard, MIT, etc) and a highly educated society with living standards just below some small asian and european countries. The US also has a peerless military (we need hypersonic weapons however) and many aircraft carriers and nukes as well as world renown special forces groups. And lastly of the top largest 100 companies in the world, 65% are US based and this despite the US only having 4.2% of the worlds population, looking at GDP per country is almost comical as the US has 30T compared to the next largest economy China(19.5T), 3rd place is Germany at 4.9T.

williamDafoe · 5 months ago
USA has three advantages that no place else in the world has. First we have the biggest oil deposit in the history of mankind with the Permian basin. Second we have more inland waterways in the Mississippi River system than the whole rest of the world combined and third this abuts the best farmland on the planet.

I would say that the USA also has an advantage of open immigration for intellectuals to keep our universities strong but the anti-intellectual Trump administration is destroying this advantage as fast as it can!

The greatest advantage that we ever had was to lead the free world in ideals. A friend of mine was telling me yesterday that every child in India when they reach the age of six wants to go to Harvard and settle in the USA. They want to stand up for freedom and for democracy and for putting down all the evil dictators in the world. We are losing this image very very quickly it could be gone in a matter of months!

Don't brag about our aircraft carriers it would take us 25 years to build 11 more. We are nowhere in ship building we destroyed our domestic shipbuilding in the 1980s when we reoriented it for military shipbuilding and then the Berlin Wall fell down and we drastically cut the military shipbuilding budget and that caused our shipbuilding to go to almost zero overnight (3 heavy ships per year nationwide whereas China's largest ship builder does THIRTY!).

u/williamDafoe

KarmaCake day617July 5, 2019View Original