I've never been a huge fan of Android due to its quirks – the annoying bloatware, the subtle yet persistent tracking, and the endless wait for security updates. It can be a real headache. However, what keeps me loyal to Android is open source and nod to the hacker culture (see xda), fostering an environment of innovation. This stands in stark contrast to the profit-centric motives that seem to dominate Apple's iOS.
In the Android world, it feels like Google is saying, 'Hey, go ahead, tinker with the code, use it for whatever you like.' (though it's far less open than it what it used to be tbh). Android makes it possible to even create hacker friendly hardware like the tv boxes and modular phones which is still a breath of fresh air for someone like me who values innovation and customization. On the other hand, Apple's iOS, with its polished exterior, often feels like a closed ecosystem where every change is meticulously controlled, primarily to maximize profits under the guise of ensuring security.
So, while Android may not offer the seamless, perfectly curated experience, the OSS part of it still makes up for it by promoting a culture of exploration and innovation. It's the difference between a platform that welcomes change and one that seems more focused on maintaining a pristine garden, even if it means stifling the potential for growth.
Google hasn't open sourced the apis that only ship as part of the Play Store, and which modern Android apps require to function. This tactic has been around for a decade now.
> Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary
Ya. That's why running Play Services & Apps sandboxed was the only remaining viable strategy to keep some degree of independence without having to go commando.
I'm of the same opinion. I also don't live with a false sense of security in "just trusting Apple" with everything. I know Android is more open for both tinkering and with less privacy (though that's been improving).
Android sources are there for the manufacturer, not the device user. It's definitely a "look but don't touch" culture. There's not a single device on earth running AOSP, not even their own Android emulators.
Google has impressive demos, but they don’t always translate into practical products that we can use in our daily lives. And sometimes, their demos are not as realistic or honest as they seem, like the recent Gemini case.
It's fascinating how we've got this double standard when it comes to Apple and Google's security moves.
Take Safari on iOS, for example—it's super restrictive. You can't even use a different browser engine; everything's just a Safari wrapper.
On the flip side, Google, with its Chrome and Android flexibility, gets a lot of flak for the same kind of security efforts.
Bottom line is both companies are only doing it for their own greed and profits, but Apple gets a high-five for being all about privacy, while Google gets the stink eye for being too controlling. It's incredibly frustrating to see this double standard.
> Take Safari on iOS, for example—it's super restrictive. You can't even use a different browser engine; everything's just a Safari wrapper.
> Apple gets a high-five for being all about privacy
Apple has been repeatedly and relentlessly criticized for its iOS lockdown, including here on Hacker News. Of course it's a controversial subject, with a lot of people on both sides, but Apple hasn't received a free pass.
I give apple the stink eye, but I also don't even bother with equipment that I know requires fighting the manufacturer to do what I want, so I tend to be less vocal about them.
Yes, this is me. I deeply dislike the Apple Way and as a result I don't use Apple stuff. This means I rarely actually complain about Apple's approach, because I'm not the sort of customer Apple wants.
But one thing that's different is that Apple -- once the Mac was released -- made it very clear about the direction they wanted to take things[1] and have stayed true to their statements. There was no bait-and-switch aspect to any of it.
[1] But hoo-boy did I complain when the Mac was released. It was a slap in the face to the hobbyist community. Then they added insult to injury with their gaslighting "1984" ad. I'm still grumpy about it to this day.
The motivations are/were different, though. Google is doing it to prop up the ads business and prevent user control over ads. It is one thing to never give a specific ability, but once people use it for 10+ years, yeah of course they're going to be upset.
When people see restriction as "greed", I understand why the companies are being treated differently.
Apple does get flak for this, just less so from Apple users.
The browser restriction on iOS could thankfully come to an end thanks to EU regulation. Though one down side, is that will serve to grow Chrome's market share even further.
It’s not true that Apple is focusing on security for “greed”, and we know that Chrome can be a successful browser (and Google a successful company) without these changes.
Until Apple starts messing up Safari to increase that part of their business, I'll keep using it. Chrome was perfect before and didn't need more changes outside of security updates. It was "enshitified" after Google had all the market share and users locked-in. There is no incentive for Chrome to get better since their is no realistic competition. Chromium may get better since Brave and other browsers use it under the hood.
Brave is chromium. And how is chrome better (or worse) than safari? They both just work, and safari is even better for laptops in terms of battery life in my experience.
Brave is slower than chromium from my experience, had issues related to bookmarks when I last tried it, and it doesn't do stuff it claims to - such as privacy, ad blocking, etc.
Safari has weird Apple-isms like nonstandard shortcuts, weird UI, and the dev tools are just kinda shit overall.
Google has the business model that if it goes away they're screwed, Apple has the business model that oh well since everyone else is doing it we might as well get a few extra bucks as well, cause we like money, but make sure it doesn't mess with our real business.
This. Or put another way, if Apple wants to do something in their private sandbox, that's one thing. But if Google wants to make changes to the core of most browsers in the world, that's something else.
Just imagine in a few years there will be a site like YouTube aka videogpt where all the videos are created on the fly, like chatgpt does for text.
From step by step repairing my electronics to learning about science it will all be customised according to my learning level and focus on things I want to know more. And hopefully without that a word from our sponsors section.
> And hopefully without that a word from our sponsors section.
it won't have this, because the product placement would be seamlessly integrated into the content so naturally that you don't notice being subliminally persuaded to think or buy what they want you to!
And don't even think of pausing a TV show now that the paused characters can animate and sell you products!
Actually that tech would be kinda cool. The reality would be bleak, but the tech would be cool.
If nothing else have the characters look out of the TV and tap their foot impatiently like Sonic used to in the videogame when you stopped playing for a moment
"Censored" and "Uncensored" is kind of a red herring these days. There are like 1000 finetunes on huggingface that will have unspeakable conversations with you. New ones come out literally every day.
A few need a little poking in the prompt, that is all. Even base models like Llama and Mistral are basically unfiltered.
You can take a look at what others are hosting on the Horde for ideas/trends, as well as looking at communities like /r/localllama: https://lite.koboldai.net/
This would be a game changer if they had something for image generation as well. Oh well, maybe it's coming soon as the page says it's just a small preview. The best part for me personally is it's available on all plans and pricing looks good too.
OT but if cloudflare fixes their false positives on showing random captchas when I'm trying to browse the net on VPN they will surely be one of my favorite companies.
I was really excited about fly.io at one point but after reading all the recent posts(1) on HN I don't have trust in their services anymore. Hope they are working on improving system stability first.
Wow this is just incredible! Seeing this and software like photopea I can now start to feel that HTML has become powerful enough that almost any desktop app can now be built for the web just as same.
A lot of people/companies tried their best to impede this progress (1) for promoting app stores but I'm so glad we are finally getting there regardless. Better late than never!
A look at the previous lunar missions [1] should give an idea. There have been 7 lander missions since 1976 (not including impactors):
- 3 by China: All success
- 1 by Japan (along with a rover from UAE): Failed
- 1 by Israel: Failed
- 1 by Russia: Failed
- 2 by India: Previous one failed. This one succeeded
I can see why the entire world would be excited by something like this. I hope that there will be routine landings by different players and that the landing guidance would be perfected.
There was a fervent space race before that. Do you believe that anybody forgot about the countless interplanetary missions before that? Every time someone tries to collect data points, someone like you will start accusing vested interests rather than argue the reasons behind the data.
Edit: Added later:
Consider these questions:
1. Russia's lunar missions were all done in 18 years until Luna 24. Why did they then wait 47 years for Luna 25?
2. The US's last lander mission and manned mission was in 1972 (Apollo 17). Why do they want to restart it again after waiting more than half a century?
Or am I making this up too? The simple fact is that the current lunar missions are undertaken by an entirely new generation. Those from 1976 has long retired. That's good enough to consider them as two separate timelines.
Assuming that CY3 landed somewhere it gets eternal sunlight, I can see how this can be an issue. Many landers and rovers have horizontal solar panels - they would work as long as the sun is reasonably above the horizon. However, the sun is always going to be near the horizon at the poles. That would not only require the solar panel to be mounted vertically, but also be oriented towards the sun somehow.
This is the first time India soft-landed anything outside of Earth. That by itself is a big deal. Soft-landing guidance on a body without atmosphere is much more complex than launch guidance.
Russian space program is a shadow of what it once was. Their history is full of daring missions and extraordinary achievements. I wish they would engage in a space race than in a war.
American space program is a shadow of what it once was. Their history is full of daring missions and extraordinary achievements. I wish they would engage in a space race rather than constant illegal, brutal, destructive and absolutely unnecessary war.
It isn't really the gotcha you think it is when you see Falcon 9s flying and landing multiple times a week, the most advanced conventional rocket engines ever being mass produced, two scifi-esque lunar landers under serious development and all the other things.
The American space program is far and away the world leader by a huge margin, while almost 2 decades ago things were dicey, the current Ameircan space program is definitely befitting of its glory during the mid/late 19th century.
I agree with everything you wrote. But you missed my point - America has an incredible space program despite their wars. If wars were the cause of space program degradation, Russia would actually be ahead.
I'm not a supporter of war mongering by any country. And what I hoped for Russia is what I hope of the entire world. But the assumption that the impact of their war efforts on their economy are similar is completely wrong. Russian economy is in shambles due to it while America goes on as usual.
Might be time for China to reconsider its role with Russia in future manned moon missions. Any prestige the Russian program once had has long since faded, even ground operations at Baikonur are now at risk with equipment being impounded by bailiffs from Kazakhstan to service billions in debt.
Russia retains an (rapidly diminishing) edge in certain areas of space. One of them is engine design. China is still keen on buying the best Soviet engines, namely Energia's RD-170 and its variants but of course Russia is less than keen on parting ways with them.
Even CALT, the major launch vehicle provider in China, admits it will be well into the late 2020s/early 2030s before they can get an engine as good as the RD-170. Their YF-130, while technically very good according to recent tests, is still a bit less efficient. Think about that, a 40 year gap. Aerospace is hard.
Using Russian engines, like the ISS collaboration was an attempt by the US to keep soviet rocket scientists in business in civilian roles so they wouldn't be incentivized to spread around the world proliferating ICBM tech.
In the process the US paid a huge price (decay of domestic design capability) and it's debatable if the goal was achieved.
Edit: Thankfully the decay has been made up for over recent years with the boom in private launch companies and of course, SpaceX's work.
Coincidentally, China's first Mars (orbiter) mission Yinghuo-1 failed because it was hitchhiking on the Russian orbiter Fobos-Grunt that failed in an Earth orbit. India launched an orbiter soon afterwards and became the first country to get it right in the first attempt.
They also created a bunch of tech that Americans thought impossible at the time - especially the staged combustion cycle with oxygen-rich preburner. And the American space programme too had its share of human losses due to sheer hubris - the 2 shuttle disasters included and possibly Apollo 1 as well. Let's not understate the achievements of the Russian space engineers and the bravery of their astronauts just because of the current political situation.
This is a big deal because since 1976, only China has (edit: had!) managed to land something successfully on the Moon. And also space exploration is cool in general.
So the mission alone is unimpressive in your opinion? If you were to weed out who did this and only focus on the what, would you not have an inch of wonder and applaud the efforts?
That's not what my comment says. Personally I don't know how impressive or unimpressive the mission is since I am not interested in space exploration and I know almost nothing about it.
Welcome to humanity - we use our feelings and emotions, often. We're not data ingesting algorithms looking to score a piece of text with an objective metric, and that's the way we like it :)
You might see it manifesting as extra attention towards topics such as minority rights, or injustices, or celebrities, or products from companies we like, or up-voting tiny open source projects that we nevertheless think are cool.
I'd be curious if it's at all interesting from a technical perspective. It was impressive in the 60s and 70s because a lot of new things needed to be discovered and understood to make it happen. But now a days.. are there really technical aspects that would not be covered in a typical engineering course?
I get it's very expensive and hence difficult to pull off - but this makes it comes off as mostly nationalism and a big display of disposable income (which for a country with so much poverty is .. something)
It's a common perspective. My personal experience (working in the defense sector) is that these kinds of endeavors end up tieing up a lot of very smart doing vanity projects that in effect don't "generate value" for society. All the people involved wouldn't just be sitting on their hands if the moon project didn't exist. But I guess it could be worse.. they could be working on moving money around or pushing ads on to people
Technically no one has landed in the crater ridden South pole on the dark side of the moon. Scientifically it's useful to course these uncharted parts of the moon both for water/ice and mineral composition.
I don't see how poverty comes into play here: every nation had similar issues when they were doing space exploration. They are two unrelated spheres. Solving one doesn't mean the other won't be
What typical engineering course covers the design of reliable systems which work mostly autonomously in environments with huge temperature variations, vacuum, inaccessibility for repair, significant radiation, mass constraints, sensor limitations etc?
Designing stuff for space involves a lot of challenges that typical engineering does not.
Plus, while the US and USSR may have done the necessary technical work, India doesn't get most of that knowledge and thus has to learn the lessons itself.
A nation isn't a singular-minded entity; rather, it comprises diverse citizens who assume various roles and contribute uniquely to global improvement. Just because they've successfully landed a rover on the moon doesn't imply the abandonment of all efforts to alleviate poverty.
Honestly, why does the recognition of India's positive accomplishments always seem overshadowed by the specter of poverty and other challenges? Did the Americans eradicate every societal issue before embarking on their lunar mission? Indians should be proud — this accomplishment is truly remarkable and signifies positive societal strides toward a better collective future. Such achievements ignite hope, and progress is fundamentally built upon hope, regardless of the symbolic origins it might stem from.
An alternative perspective to consider, what happens to all the skilled engineers interested in and capable of working on advanced technologies like those intended for space if a country decides to put all other development on hold to singlemindedly focus on eradicating poverty?
What would happen to the next generations of talented potential engineers? What value would there be to pursuing an advanced education? Since obviously a space program isn't the only "luxury" that should be put on hold if poverty exists!
The talent would all leave and the next generations would be less incentivized to pursue the very kinds of careers that help a country develop.
I don't think anything happens after we die. But as human beings is just too hard for us to comprehend things without a beginning or an end. Because it Just doesn't fit the model of our world.
That is why one might recommend psychedelic experiences: you are likely to come back with a conviction that your soul existed for eternity before your birth and will exist for eternity after as well.
I think this is highly dependent on what your beliefs are pre-trip and how you define what makes you you. I've had many psychedelic experiences and while I often feel greater connection to living things around me, I've never been left with the feeling that my "soul" or anything I'd define as me will exist when I'm gone.
This is congruent with the sense that my ‘soul’ is a local aspect of the dynamics that have been playing out in the universe and will continue after my death. I am a little piece of the dance, for a while.
If that were so, people would be far more accepting of the idea that life, the one thing we do know that ends for everyone, just... ends, and that there is nothing for the dead after that.
But people struggle with it, the concept of simply stopping to exist is terrifying for some.
In the Android world, it feels like Google is saying, 'Hey, go ahead, tinker with the code, use it for whatever you like.' (though it's far less open than it what it used to be tbh). Android makes it possible to even create hacker friendly hardware like the tv boxes and modular phones which is still a breath of fresh air for someone like me who values innovation and customization. On the other hand, Apple's iOS, with its polished exterior, often feels like a closed ecosystem where every change is meticulously controlled, primarily to maximize profits under the guise of ensuring security.
So, while Android may not offer the seamless, perfectly curated experience, the OSS part of it still makes up for it by promoting a culture of exploration and innovation. It's the difference between a platform that welcomes change and one that seems more focused on maintaining a pristine garden, even if it means stifling the potential for growth.