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Re:Carrie Fisher has died on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @01:43PM (#13265031)
As a counterpoint, when my wife and I saw Rogue One we were both impressed that they managed to find somebody that looks just like Tarkin from the original film. I had no idea he was CG until reading about it after the fact.
Re:Cortana available on iOS and Android on Wednesday December 09, 2015 @12:14PM (#10705021)
The Android version can use "Hey Cortana"; it's under Settings. No idea about the iOS version, though.
Re:My bank has an API so I built online banking on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @03:16PM (#10623350)
This is true for even some small-town banks. I switched to Windows Phone last year and built a personal banking app that would display my financial details on a live tile. While using Fiddler to figure out the necessary API calls, I discovered that my tiny bank's Android and iOS API was actually provided and maintained by a much larger bank.

It turns out that the bigger bank has dozens of smaller banks using the very same API, and its a trivial matter of switching a URL slug to make my makeshift API work for these other banks.

It was an interesting learning experience, but I did manage to get myself locked out of my own bank account a few times while replicating the login process.

Re:Working remotely is hard on Sunday November 15, 2015 @07:59PM (#10572017)
I enjoy socializing, but I do not enjoy socializing when I'm trying to work.
Re:HN now mostly readable on mobile on Monday November 09, 2015 @08:32PM (#10537064)
Lumia 640, looks fine for me too.
Re:New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @12:03PM (#10339850)
I've had a Band for most of the year and highly recommend it. Unlike watty, I think it's pretty comfortable. Admittedly it took a couple of days to get used to, but I rarely notice that it's on my wrist. The only exception being that the non-curved display does get in the way when I type on a laptop — which is very rare for me, your mileage may vary.

I'd recommend that you get a screen protector for your band, though. The weird, soft bezel around this version is extremely prone to scratches doing even the most mundane tasks.

Re:Google OnHub Review on Monday August 31, 2015 @10:48AM (#10147025)
What I'm most concerned about, as somebody switching back to a Windows Phone soon, is the apparent lack of a web interface for the OnHub. According to this page [1] the OnHub requires an Android or iOS device, with the app installed, to setup and configure the router. I don't blame Google for not supporting Windows Phone, the market share is still very low, but I'm not convinced that requiring an app instead of using a web interface like every other router is what I want from this.

[1]: https://on.google.com/hub/support/#get-started

Re:Windows 10 now running on 75M devices on Wednesday August 26, 2015 @02:17PM (#10124976)
Worth noting: According to an article by Mary Jo Foley, "the 75 million refers to activated copies of Windows 10 (not devices in channel)".

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-more-than-75-million-...

Re:Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:41AM (#9968528)
> Instead I have to have the Xbox brand shoved in my face at every opportunity?

I know this isn't your point, but you might be happy to learn that Xbox Music and Xbox Video have been renamed in Windows 10 to "Groove Music" and "Video", respectively. According to Microsoft, most users thought "I don't have an Xbox, why would I want to use Xbox Music?" — so they rebranded those apps.

Re:Show HN: I just released my first self-published book on Friday July 24, 2015 @12:39PM (#9943200)
Good for you! Magento isn't in my wheelhouse, but I'd be interested in hearing how you've gone about marketing your book before release — building a mailing list, sharing articles to social media, guest blog posts, etc. Do you have anything you'd do differently if you were to write another book in the future?
Keep in mind that the submitter can edit the title for up to one (two?) hours after submitting it.
Re:Earnings Release FY15 Q4 on Tuesday July 21, 2015 @05:12PM (#9925852)
It's interesting that Lumia sales are up by more than 10%, but revenue through phone sales decreased by 38%. That was primarily caused by Microsoft's refusal to sell any flagship Windows Phones after they purchased Nokia. I was personally affected by that decision — after my Lumia 1520 broke, I had to reluctantly upgrade to an LG G4 because there are no flagship Windows Phones for sale anymore.
Re:User agent overrides for top Japanese Sites on Monday July 20, 2015 @03:22PM (#9918363)
It's an unfortunate state of affairs when a modern browser has to spoof another browser just to get the right content. The user agent in Microsoft's new browser does this by default [1][2]. As a user, I'd love to see a day when browsers don't reveal their user agents and web developers rely on feature detection instead. I admit, though, that I haven't fully considered the collateral damage that might come with that.

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/a/31279980

[2]: http://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/06/17/building-a-mor...

I believe that's referring to Xamarin and Cordova, which are now built into VS2015. Xamarin still requires a Xamarin subscription to compile and deploy the apps, though.

On the other hand, they might also be talking about the new Universal Windows Platform bridges [1], which let you port your Android, iOS, Win32 and Web apps to native Windows apps.

[1]: https://dev.windows.com/en-us/uwp-bridges

Re:Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6B Nokia Writedown on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @05:57PM (#9854877)
Again, this is all subjective, but I'll try to explain why I prefer live tiles over Android's widgets.

1. Android widgets are huge, I can fit maybe 4-5 widgets on one page of the Android desktop. More than that, they become so scrunched that you can't get any information out of them. This is compounded by the fact that some widgets only allow a certain size unless you download 3rd-party launchers.

2. Widget design is largely up to the app developer, and a lot of widgets are ugly (subjective) or at least don't match the other widgets you have them grouped with.

3. Widgets try to be interactive, and I can't tell you how frustrated it makes me when I'm scrolling across the desktops to look at widgets and I accidentally cross an item off of a todo list, or scroll through my list of emails instead of continuing on to the next desktop.

To me, the Android (and iPhone) home screens feel lifeless and dead when compared to a Windows Phone. On WP, my live tiles are always flipping around and displaying the latest emails, tweets, facebook posts, news articles, pictures from my camera roll, etc. The Windows Phone start screen displays all of that information to me at a glance, and I can pick and choose what to do next based on the summary that I see on my start screen. On Android, though, I have to actively search for that information by going from app to app.

Re:Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6B Nokia Writedown on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @02:25PM (#9853669)
I'm using a brand new LG G4 as my daily driver, and I own two Nexus 7s. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the Android widgets I can set up on my G4 [1] compare in any way to the live tiles on a Windows Phone [2]. I recognize that this is all subjective, though.

[1]: http://i.imgur.com/jimMDvp.png

[2]: http://i.imgur.com/vMjhP9b.jpg

Re:Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6B Nokia Writedown on Wednesday July 08, 2015 @10:29AM (#9851714)
Personally, I switched over to Windows Phone from a Nexus 4 after I bought a generic Windows 8 tablet and started using the live tiles. In my opinion, compared to the iOS and Android "grid of icons", live tiles are just superior in every way. I'm honestly surprised that neither Google nor Apple have copied Microsoft here.
Re:WinJS: The Windows Library for JavaScript on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @02:09PM (#9687538)
For those that are curious about this, sudioStudio64 is talking about "Project Westminster", which is one of the four "Universal Windows Platform bridges". The other three let you essentially port Android, iOS and Win32 apps to the new UWP platform and app store.

https://dev.windows.com/en-us/uwp-bridges

Re:Apple iPad Gets Split-Screen Multitasking in iOS 9 on Monday June 08, 2015 @03:24PM (#9681605)
It looks like full-screen snapping is used when the machine is in "Tablet mode", which you can turn on and off in the Windows 10 action center.
Re:BitTorrent-Style Updates Revealed in Windows 10 on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @04:24PM (#9221146)
> MS publishes new builds like biweekly through MSDN.

While this is supposed to be true, there hasn't been a new public build in 50-something days. Most of the new information is coming from leaked internal builds.

Re:Show HN: Custom New Tab page for Firefox on Thursday March 12, 2015 @02:50PM (#9192917)
Similarly, if you prefer the American date format you can change the two $scope.text lines near the end of controllers.js to

  $scope.text = "Good " + $scope.getStateOfDay(moment().get('hour')) + ", today is " + moment().format('dddd MM/DD/YYYY') + ".";
which looks like 'Thursday 03/12/2015'; or you can change both lines to

  $scope.text = "Good " + $scope.getStateOfDay(moment().get('hour')) + ", today is " + moment().format('dddd, MMMM DD, YYYY') + ".";
which looks like 'Thursday, March 12, 2015'.
Re:Apple App Store STATUS_CODE_ERROR causes service problems on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @10:38AM (#9184271)
I had asked the founder about a Windows Phone client a couple of weeks ago and at the time he had said a WP client was 'very likely'. Not sure which is more recent, but I would also like to see an Authy client for Windows Phone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9100644

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