> I can't really think of an essential daily app (minus work / minus business related / minus intensive reading) that I use which has better UI and UX on a tablet.
For me it's TV. While I own a TV, I essentially never use it. A tablet has more viewing area than a phone, which makes it much more pleasant to consume TV shows on.
I think you hit the nail on the head re. how well relatively recent tablets work. At first I thought a tablet would be like a phone — replaced annually — but I find that I've had the same tablet for four years. It does its job, it's a nice size (and Google haven't come out with another 7" tablet since!); why replace it?
> There's remarkably little evidence that terrorists are making routine use of strong encryption.
Even if they were, we Americans have a fundamental right to strong encryption, protected under the Second, Ninth & Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. I'd go further still, and argue that everyone in the world (who's not a prisoner or otherwise unfree) has a right to strong encryption.
Requiring ID to exercise the right to vote is no more 'needlessly restrictive' than requiring it to exercise the right to bear arms or the right to drink. Canada, Germany, Switzerland & the Netherlands are among the countries which require ID to vote, and none of those is a dark dystopia of voter restriction.
I would be completely fine with requiring ID to vote if that ID was provided to you at birth or the age of majority, maintained at little to no cost by the state, and was convenient to replace or update due to marital or name change.
Instead, the states that are implementing voter ID laws are primarily states that used techniques like poll tests to disenfranchise minority voters, have limited access to ID issuing facilities in areas where voters tend to lack ID, and require documentation for issuance that people may not possess.
Seen through that lens, it's difficult to see America's regional interest in voter ID as anything other than a disingenuous attempt to continue to disenfranchise minority voters.
Sorry, no, that argument is baseless and "fake news" to coin the term. Anyone who looks into it or lives in the state knows it's so easy to get an ID in NC and you have months to get it done between election days. It's even free if it's not tied to a DL. It's seriously no harder than registering to vote, and you can do both at the same time.
Most of the commentary about voter ID laws here is from ignorant politically motivated journalists who find it easy to look down and judge southern states because everything they're doing must be racist and we're morally superior in every way. They don't even bother to look at what it's arguing. Sorry, but it gets a little tiring, and when it comes to this attitude of regarding southerners as ignorant and prejudice it's often the most ironic example of the pot calling the kettle black. It's harder to do something so basic as get utilities turned on in a new apartment to say nothing of a passport, and an ID would be required anyway for that, that anyone of basic competence can do it and it isn't some great imposition on them. It's not a literacy test or requiring proof of land ownership or anything like that.
Then why aren't all the businesses and banks and insurance companies who also require an ID not being prosecuted for placing an undue burden on minorities. If what you are saying is right, then it should be an open-and-shut case. Right?
Regarding the Netherlands, everyone aged 14 or older is required to always carry ID. This means that here, voter ID laws won't be restrictive because essentially everyone has ID.
Germany also seems to have similar laws.
The point being, whether voter ID is restrictive depends on how widespread accepted ID is, and what the barriers to getting such ID are. I recall that, much like gerrymandering, there are cases where US state legislators explicitly demanded demographic information on ID ownership before moving forward with voter ID laws.
That is to say, there isn't just correlation between voter-id proposals and partisan advantage, there are clear signs of actual intent.
Those countries didn't specifically design their ID requirements to prevent black people from voting like the Carolinas were proven in court to have done.
It is needlessly restrictive when the system is simultaneously designed to make it difficult for specific parts of the populace to get identification and when its enforcement is not uniform but selective.
Furthermore, in the absence of any widespread voter fraud, what purpose does it serve or accomplish other than to intimidate or disenfranchise voters? Voter ID only makes sense when there are concerns about fraudulent activity.
That's actually something I worry about. I'm blind without my glasses, seriously, debilitatingly blind. With them, of course, I have better-than-perfect (for some value of 'perfect') vision. Should I have children? Is it ethical to do so? I honestly don't know.
My view is anything we have technology to cure we shouldn't worry about.
The more problems we can treat with technology the smaller the genetic search space becomes. evolution can focus just on the things we can't easily solve.
What is your specific visual condition, if you don't mind my asking. Most people who I'd characterize as "debilitatingly blind" are lucky if they get any benefit from conventional eyeglasses, let alone "better-than-perfect" vision. I have a significant visual impairment myself (myopia, aphakia, and nystagmus) but I wouldn't put myself in that category.
Astigmatism and severe myopia. They're easily correctable, but without glasses I can't see more than about three inches from my nose. At normal viewing distances I simply cannot even see things other people can see, like letters, small animals or children &c.
Without glasses I'd be severely crippled. I've conducted a few experiments trying to move around in public without them, and it's beyond frightening.
Thanks for sharing, and forgive my sounding skeptical. I lucked out because the aphakia and myopia sort of cancel each other out, I still need glasses but they're primarily for near-distance. If I hadn't undergone cataract surgery as an infant, I'd probably have similar challenges.
Adobe doesn't really get xml at all. A couple of times I've had to make software produce InDesign templates (https://spin.atomicobject.com/2017/04/25/dynamic-indesign-te...), you have to do string templating because real xml serializers aren't compatible with the "sortof xml" that adobe uses.
I did a big project involving InDesign and the XML import a few years ago (CS4 times). Once I learnt to be very careful when editing the templates, it was pretty satisfying.
I remember that certain XML tags had to use the exact namespace defined in the Adobe spec, but other than that it all seemed pretty XML compliant.
I was using Python / ElementTree, and had to override the namespaces to make sure the exact name was being used. Or something.
It's honestly too many years ago now to remember, I just remember trying a couple of perfectly reasonable things (maybe attributes, maybe multiple sub lists, I'm not sure) and having it break. But I think it only broke when you created a new template, not when you were using an existing one with new data, or something along those lines. You could make a change and not realize it broke things for a week.
It was incredibly temperamental too. I got the initial bare bones demo working and showed the powers that be, but after that a spent a week trying to do it again and it wouldn't work. I one stage me and a colleague went through a tutorial on it in sync and the same steps would work on one computer but not the other.
Had we got it working well we might have even saved this particular company (mostly a graphic design one), they were in the advanced stages of circling the drain. It's frustrating when you see the potential of huge productivity improvements but their just out of reach.
> No, no, a thousand times NO. Location should NOT EVER be used as a basis for things like units, currency, date format etc.
I completely agree. I'm located in the U.S. and use dollars and English customary units, but I prefer German-style dates and British spelling. Displaying metres and Celsius to me because I prefer to spell 'colour' properly is stupid.
If that's what you prefer, change the settings. Saying that the majority of Americans (to use your example) should be defaulted to British spelling because of edge cases like yourself is stupid, to use your language.
And that's all my original post talks about — defaults. I never said you shouldn't be allowed to change them.
I use tmux within my tiling window manager: it manages my terminal, and the WM manages windows. It works great for me, because this way I only have a single terminal to worry about.
You're right that emacs without any config is annoying. Check out Prelude (https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude); it's a really nice set of defaults for emacs.
I think emacs is the modern editor in its own spirit: none of the imitations come close.
> You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having a say for the president, because acreage.
The majority of the country elects the President, because the United States are composed of the several States (not the people thereof), and the states elect the President. Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states.
"The majority of the country"? Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016 elections, or are you confusing people with acres?
The whole problem is the breaking it up by states, because states are quite frankly not that relevant. No one has allegiances to states. States are subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of the federal government. They're basically counties.
The central thesis behind the electoral college simply didn't play out, and holding up today is simply necrocracy. There's a reason why no other government on Earth has one of these things.
> Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016 elections, or are you confusing people with acres?
Are you confusing the states with the people? The United States are composed of the several States, and the States elected Messrs. Bush & Trump in those years.
> No one has allegiances to states.
They ought to.
> States are subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of the federal government. They're basically counties.
No, states are the sovereign entities which constitute the United States. The people did not ratify the constitution; the states did. Misconceptions like yours are why we should repeal the 17th Amendment, replacing it with one mandating that legislatures appoint their federal senators. Frankly, I'd love to see legislatures appoint electors, too. The people have a voice in the House; having voices in the Senate and in the Executive is too much.
"The central thesis behind the electoral college simply didn't play out, and holding up today is simply necrocracy. There's a reason why no other government on Earth has one of these things."
I think you mean like the UN, where countries vote not citizens from around the world. According to your logic, the people of China should be able to force you and all other people around the world to do anything and enforce any law that they wish.
In 2016 the electoral college functioned exactly as it was designed, to stop the tyranny of the more populous states over the less populous states. You may disagree whether the ec should remain, but you can't say that it didn't play out in 2016.
Majority in what way? Not necessarily a majority of the people.
> Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states.
More people live there, though. So those states represent the views of more people. Under your system, someone in South Dakota would have a 1/750,000th of a say in their state's choice, while someone in California would have a 1/36Mth of a say in their state's choice.
> Majority in what way? Not necessarily a majority of the people.
The people are irrelevant, because the United States is composed of the States, not of the people. The majority of the states, through their electors, elect the President.
> So those states represent the views of more people. Under your system, someone in South Dakota would have a 1/750,000th of a say in their state's choice, while someone in California would have a 1/36Mth of a say in their state's choice.
Why care about the number of people represented? California is free to petition the Congress to split into smaller, South-Dakota-sized states if it so wishes. More to the point, California and South Dakota are individual sovereign states which are each part of the United States. They are constitutional equals. It would be unfair to give California forty-eight times the voice of South Dakota.
Frankly, I think our Constitution has a good balance: the People are represented in the House; the States in the Senate (which is why direct election of Senators is a catastrophically disastrous mistake); and states determine how to choose their electors. I'm in favour of constitutional amendments revoking the 17th Amendment and mandating that state legislatures appoint senators & electors.
For me it's TV. While I own a TV, I essentially never use it. A tablet has more viewing area than a phone, which makes it much more pleasant to consume TV shows on.
I think you hit the nail on the head re. how well relatively recent tablets work. At first I thought a tablet would be like a phone — replaced annually — but I find that I've had the same tablet for four years. It does its job, it's a nice size (and Google haven't come out with another 7" tablet since!); why replace it?