Month: March 2013

Five features iOS should steal from Android

Aurich Lawson, Age 5 If you’ve come anywhere near a tech site in the last year or so, you’ve heard it all before. “iOS is getting stale compared to Android! It needs some new ideas!” Whether that’s actually true is up for (heated) debate, but those with an open mind are usually willing to acknowledge that Apple and Google could afford to swap a few ideas when it comes to their mobile OSes. So in a fantasy world where we could bring over some of the better Android features to iOS, which features would those be? Among the Ars staff, we sometimes have spirited “conversations” about what aspects would be the best for each company to photocopy. So, we thought we’d pick a few that might go over well with iOS users. Don’t worry, we have a companion post of features that Android could afford to steal from iOS. The copying can go both ways. No one wants iOS to become Android or vice versa. This is about recognizing how to improve iOS with features that would be useful to people depending on their smartphones for more than the occasional text or phone call. We recognize that Apple tries to keep an eye towards elegant implementation, too. So which features are we talking about? Glad you asked… Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Five features iOS should steal from Android

A Baby Has Been Cured of HIV

It may sound hard to believe, but doctors from Mississippi are saying that for the first time, an infant has been cured of an HIV infection. The New York Times relays reports from doctors who say the infant had tested positive for HIV on five separate occasions and now, at age two and a half and off drugs for an entire year, the child shows no signs of the virus in its body. More »

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A Baby Has Been Cured of HIV

Smoothing 3D prints with acetone and without patent violations

Austin Wilson  and Neil Underwood from the North Carolina makerspace Fablocker invented a great, simple process for smoothing out 3D prints using evaporated nail-polish remover in a large jar. The process produces a beautiful finish and sidesteps a bunch of dumb patents for polishing 3D printing output. They’re still experimenting with the details, and the fact that the first experiments turned out such great looking pieces is cause for excitement about where this will go when it’s fully refined. ABS-based printed parts are placed in the jar with the acetone and heated to 90 degrees Celsius on the hot plate. Acetone has a low evaporation point, but is heavier than air so the process creates a small cloud around the model which melts the surface, slowly smoothing it to a mirror finish. After a couple hours, the parts solidify, can be removed, and be displayed with pride. …Since their initial success the duo has been experimenting with the process by controlling temperature ranges and exposure times, but there are still many tests to be conducted. One area in need of more research is measuring how the process impacts the physical properties of the parts. “It doesn’t really seem to change the shape of objects or alter the dimensions, but we haven’t had time to do test cubes and measure them with calipers,” says Wilson. “If anything the smoothing out process might make things work better. People have tried to use 3-D printed models as bushings and axels before, but they never work because they’re too rough.” Slick Trick Adds Much-Needed Shine to 3-D Printed Parts [Joseph Flaherty/Wired]

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Smoothing 3D prints with acetone and without patent violations

How an algorithm came up with Amazon’s KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT t-shirt

You may have heard that Amazon is selling a “KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT” t-shirt. How did such a thing come to pass? Well, as Pete Ashton explains, this is a weird outcome of an automated algorithm that just tries random variations on “KEEP CALM AND,” offering them for sale in Amazon’s third-party marketplace and printing them on demand if any of them manage to find a buyer. The t-shirts are created by an algorithm. The word “algorithm” is a little scary to some people because they don’t know what it means. It’s basically a process automated by a computer programme, sometimes simple, sometimes complex as hell. Amazon’s recommendations are powered by an algorithm. They look at what you’ve been browsing and buying, find patterns in that behaviour and show you things the algorithm things you might like to buy. Amazons algorithms are very complex and powerful, which is why they work. The algorithm that creates these t-shirts is not complex or powerful. This is how I expect it works. 1) Start a sentence with the words KEEP CALM AND. 2) Pick a word from this long list of verbs. Any word will do. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’re all fine. 3) Finish the sentence with one of the following: OFF, THEM, IF, THEM or US. 4) Lay these words out in the classic Keep Calm style. 5) Create a mockup jpeg of a t-shirt. 6) Submit the design to Amazon using our boilerplate t-shirt description. 7) Go back to 1 and start again. There are currently 529,493 Solid Gold Bomb clothing items on Amazon. Assuming they survive this and don’t get shitcanned by Amazon I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they top a million in a few months. It costs nothing to create the design, nothing to submit it to Amazon and nothing for Amazon to host the product. If no-one buys it then the total cost of the experiment is effectively zero. But if the algorithm stumbles upon something special, something that is both unique and funny and actually sells, then everyone makes money. Dictionary + algorithm + PoD t-shirt printer + lucrative meme = rape t-shirts on Amazon

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How an algorithm came up with Amazon’s KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT t-shirt

How Competing Companies Are Jointly Building WebKit

New submitter jgb writes “WebKit is, now that Opera decided to join the project, in the core of three of the five major web browsers: Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chromium and Opera. Therefore, WebKit is also a melting pot for many corporate interests, since several competing companies (not only Google and Apple, but also Samsung, RIM, Nokia, Intel and many others) are finding ways of collaborating in the project. All of this makes fascinating the study of how they are contributing to the project. Some weeks ago, a study showed how they were submitting contributions to the code base. Now another one uncovers how they are reviewing those submitted contributions. As expected, most of the reviews during the whole life of the project were done by Apple, with Google as a close second. But things have changed dramatically during the last few years. In 2012, Google is a clear first, reviewing about twice as much (50%) as Apple (25%). RIM (7%) and Nokia (5%) are also relevant reviewers. Code review is very important in WebKit’s development process, with reviewers acting as a sort of gatekeepers, deciding which changes make sense, and when they are conforming to the project practices and quality standards. In some sense, review activity reflects the responsibility each company is taking on how WebKit evolves. In some sense, the evolution over time for this activity by the different companies tells the history of how they have been shaping the project.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Competing Companies Are Jointly Building WebKit

Steam For Linux: A Respectable Showing

An anonymous reader writes “Valve has just released its February, 2013 Steam Hardware & Software Survey, and the results are absolutely mind blowing. Linux is now standing strong as a legitimate gaming platform. It now represents 2.02% of all active Steam users.” That’s in keeping with what new submitter lars_doucet found. Lars writes: “I’m an independent game developer lucky enough to be on Steam. Recently, the Steam Linux client officially went public and was accompanied by a site-wide sale. The Linux sale featured every single Linux-compatible game on the service, including our cross-platform game Defender’s Quest. …. Bottom line: during the sale we saw nearly 3 times as many Linux sales of the game as Mac (Windows still dominated overall).” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Steam For Linux: A Respectable Showing

Apple’s Lightning Digital AV Adapter Hides a Tiny Computer

Apple’s Lightning Digital AV Adapter is 50 bucks. That’s expensive. Apple’s Lightning Digital AV Adapter hooks up your iOS devices’ Lightning port to HDMI. But it lags and gives artifacts. Apple’s Lightning Digital AV adapter actually hides a tiny computer inside in the cable…wait what? Yes. More »

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Apple’s Lightning Digital AV Adapter Hides a Tiny Computer