Viewing profile — grbalaffa

Good luck with "avoiding" it. It's getting harder and harder to use Google without using Google+ (clearly intentional), and it's nearly equally hard to use the internet without usi…

Yeah there is more than a little bit of selection bias going on here. What percentage of criminals are dumb enough to get noticed and/or caught? Well, we don't know how many don't …

I'd describe him as someone who has actually been around the block, as the saying goes. Compare that with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6486142 Kinda speaks for itself…

> revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins According to this that's close to the current total supply of all bitcoins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.…

Bluetooth LE is in fact a standard, and is in fact much more widely deployed than NFC. Android already has support for it as of 4.3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_ener…

The segmented control in "Photo Investigator" is completely illegible post-update.

Google+ deserves to wither and die because of the BS they have pulled. When I'm forced to create a Google+ account just to use some of the basic features of the corporate Google Ap…

Yo Mama thinks it's a nice way to do it, too!

At least I gave an example. "Many things" are not just easier, but "far" easier? Like what? I've got plenty more examples, but I'd really like to hear about these "many" things whi…

All this talk about process, but not a word about the quality of the SDK itself. Android is quite frankly still very far behind when it comes to really basic things. Here's just on…

Don't worry, they will work it so that there is a very expensive and labyrinthine process for privacy "compliance" for companies operating in the US which will purely by coincidenc…

I've actually found the opposite to be the case. I'm much more apt to concentrate and strive to build something great when I'm trapped in a run-down, somewhat distraction-free envi…

According to this, the tax lien is not related to the tax break for the Ann Arbor office: http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/googles-31-million-m...

Just to pick one example, ancient people actually had very good teeth: http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/ancestors-had-much...

Even though it was two years ago, we're still feeling the after effects. There is a considerable lag time between approving new construction and actually getting some built. One ba…

HBO and the other "premium" cable channels also do this. Not every single time, but much of the time. Try watching any of the Lord of the Rings movies on HBO or Cinemax for example…

Both Mac and Windows may lagged behind the various unixes at the time in terms of WAN technologies (such as TCP/IP), but the Mac had fantastic LAN capabilities in the form of Apple…

Just like when Steve Ballmer claimed[1] that "Vista has never been delayed" because they changed the name.[2] [1] http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-09-25/online-extra-... [2…

Your amazingly succinct description of all that is wrong with today's mobile app stores is bordering on poetry. Nicely put.

> The stores themselves will just roll out their own competing services. Safeway already has their own online ordering & delivery service, however it doesn't allow you to bundle it…

Yeah, somebody hasn't gotten the memo it seems.

It's because our society simply doesn't value the profession, and those engineers who feel guilty have internalized it. There is a strong undercurrent of social programming in west…

This weekend I spent some time walking around SF and was astounded at how many new apartments are under construction. Even more interesting were the old run-down buildings which we…

In case anyone doubts the reality of this quote: http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-use...

Yeah although a big question is: what will that do to battery life? People who install lots of gimmicky, frequently-updated apps and forget about them after trying them once will s…