Monthly Archive:: December 2014

What if your cloud instances could be updated with the same certainty and precision as your mobile phone - with carrier grade assurance that an update applies perfectly or is not applied at all? What if your apps could be isolated from one another completely, so there's no possibility that installing one app could break another, and stronger assurance that a compromise of one app won't compromise the data from another? When we set out to build the Ubuntu Phone we took on the challenge of raising the bar for reliability and security in the mobile market. And today that same technology is coming to the cloud, in the form of a new "snappy" image called Ubuntu Core, which is in beta today on Azure and as a KVM image you can run on any Linux machine.

Jolla is another system that took many of the lessons of iOS and Android, and rethought how a mobile system should work. Since Jolla's tablet crowdsourcing project ends tomorrow, this seems like a good time to talk about some of the things Jolla does really well.

Anyway, as I was reading the news of the Nokia tablet, a thought hit me - maybe it's time for Nokia and Jolla to kiss and make up. When you think about it, it makes sense. First of all, Jolla employees are used to seeing "Nokia" on their paychecks. Sure they took some time off, but at least they were being productive with their time.

Also, at Apple's request, we had to remove the ability to "Send" files to other services, including iCloud Drive.

In short, we're told that while Transmit iOS can download content from iCloud Drive, we cannot upload content to iCloud Drive unless the content was created in the app itself. Apple says this use would violate 2.23 - "Apps must follow the iOS Data Storage Guidelines or they will be rejected" - but oddly that page says nothing about iCloud Drive or appropriate uses for iCloud Drive.

Rumours of Nintendo working on its own mobile phone have been appearing on and off for the past decade, and recently we even heard that the idea almost become a reality back in 2004. The prospect of owning a mobile telecommunications device crafted to suit Nintendo's unique vision is a tantalising one, but the firm has so far refused to embrace the notion. With shareholders calling for Nintendo to make its titles available for a wider audience by embracing existing mobile platforms such as iOS and Android, you might assume that the time for creating a unique mobile device has long since passed, but we're not so sure. In fact, it could be argued that there's never been a better time for Nintendo to release a handset of its own.

Starting just a few minutes ago at 1 p.m. ET, Microsoft has begun to roll out another OS update for those utilizing the Preview for Developers program.

Heading into Settings and Phone Update, users can tap the Check for Updates button to begin downloading the latest version of Windows Phone 8.1.1. Part of this update should enable Cortana for those in Europe, which was announced this morning. As usual, we also expect some bug fixes and optimizations as well.

Among the topics discussed, why John Chen took the CEO job at BlackBerry, how the company has progressed since his arrival, the NSA and his plans for the future of BlackBerry. Even if you've heard some of the information before, it's still an interesting and deeper look into the man now in charge of BlackBerry.

"A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers," Zuckerberg says. "I think it's the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you're paying Apple that you're somehow in alignment with them? If you were in alignment with them, then they'd make their products a lot cheaper!"

OpenBSD is an amazing project and has some of the best code around but some of us are of the opinion that it could use a bit of modernization. OpenBSD is a very security conscious project and, correspondingly, has to be more conservative with features. We want to be less restrictive with the codebase when it comes to experimenting with features.

When Gabriel Weinberg launched a search engine in 2008, plenty of people thought he was insane. How could DuckDuckGo, a tiny, Philadelphia-based startup, go up against Google? One way, he wagered, was by respecting user privacy. Six years later, we're living in the post-Snowden era, and the idea doesn't seem so crazy.

In fact, DuckDuckGo is exploding.

More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants. What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people's identities. But you could in principle have a useful conversation about them with some people. And there are other topics that might seem harmless, like the relative merits of Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, that you couldn't safely talk about with others.

Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

When I thought about what motivated me to lob this snarkbomb, I realized I was looking for a reaction. I wanted some kind of defiant response to questions that've recently bugged me - What's going on with Google+? Where is it headed? What the fuck is it for, anyway?