maybe you're in a different age group/peer group compared to when you lived thru the IT bubble? someone else going thru the 2000s IT bubble may have said that too...

kotlin might be a better choice - there's already projects like robovm (...bought & killed by MS), multi-os engine(intel-backed), and so on...

You don't even need those anymore – Kotlin/Native targets iOS directly: https://hackertimes.com/item?id=15712015

maybe 'was'? kotlin is the official google's recommendation for android now... (and kotlin can have multiple 'backends' -- e.g. build-to-java / native / web / etc)

Kotlin could just be a stopgap, though. It’s still a JVM language so it’s an easier migration, and from what little I’ve seen it doesn’t add very much other than syntactic sugar for null checks.

I doubt Kotlin is a stop-gap measure, and it does a lot more than just give syntactic sugar for null checks. As the comment above you mentioned it's not only JVM, it has a JS backend and a fully native one which is developing very rapidly. Kotlin and Swift have a very significant overlap in language features, and with how strong the Kotlin community is, I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, I would sooner see multiplatform development embracing Kotlin over Swift, given how well it's progressing. Kotlin native hasn't even reached 1.0 yet, and they already made a very convincing showcase of how it can be used to develop server backend + frontend + android + iOS with significant code reuse, and not having to constantly switch language contexts: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlinconf-app

Cloud Firestore has too many limitations on what it can't do...

e.g. can't query with age > 10 and have it sorted by age <-- (wrong example)

edit: see benjaminl's comment on the wrong example

CORRECT example: can't query with age > 10 and have it sorted by total_spent

Firebase Cloud Firestore is new product from Firebas and is much more flexible than Firebase Realtime Databse.

It can do accomplish that query. From the docs a similar query:

  citiesRef
    .where("population", ">", 100000)
    .orderBy("population")
    .limit(2)

https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/query-data/order-...

if you scroll down:

citiesRef.where("population", ">", 100000).orderBy("country")

is invalid...

EDIT: sorry got confused & posted wrong example (population/population vs population / country)

That is interesting. The examples show this limitation.

> Invalid: Range filter and first orderBy on different fields

But I can’t find any documentation on what exactly the limitations on orderBy are.

The reference docs on queries don’t mention any limitations on order_by: https://cloud.google.com/firestore/docs/reference/rpc/google...

why even assume you have to 'look at' the keyboard?

the keyboard can follow the user's view... along with the silhouette of the user's hand...

This could be done, but I expect it to be usually pretty annoying. Most of the time when I type I don't want to be looking at my hands or the keyboard. Instead, I want to be looking at either the text I'm typing or something else (like some other text, or a video, etc). Having a silhouette of my hands and a keyboard superimposed over what I'm looking at will just be distracting.

That said, I don't really have a better suggestion. Typing in VR is just going to be plain painful for anyone who can touch type with any speed on a physical keyboard.

With gaze tracking, you could have hot zones bound to different shortcuts, one of which can be "Toggle floating keyboard".

um... bitcoin? heard like 3 years ago that bitcoin will handle all sorts of micro-transactions...

anyone know what happened?

I haven't used BTC in a long time but last I read transactions take a very long time to process because the blocksize is too small to contain all the transactions that took place. I read (not sure if this is correct) that transaction fees needed to be upwards of $20 to ensure the transaction was included in the next block.

I never spend more than $0.10 on transaction fees for bitcoin. I mean, you could give $5 if you wanted to, but why would you? If I was sending a dollar I wouldn't pay more than $0.01 or less for the transaction fee. And for something so cheap the merchant shouldn't bother waiting on confirmations. Exploiting 0 confirmations isn't easy, and it's not worth the work to anyone for a dollar. Even with sub cent transaction fees they'll still settle faster than 3-5 business days.

Stop spreading FUD. I spent 10c sending a transaction for $20 a month ago.

Smallest transaction I've seen is 191 bytes; [1] says right now to get a transaction in the next block the minimum fee is 240 satoshis/byte; and that today the 251-260 satoshis/byte has been the most common fee.

That's $2.82 according to [2].

And that's with current levels of demand - if there was a transaction every time someone visited a website, demand would be much, much higher.

[1] https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ [2] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=(191*240%2F100000000)+BTC+...

Yes, you're right. I miscalculated the fee. I actually paid $1 and was not trying to get it in the next block.

That's why you would use an off-chain solution like lightning payment channels with sub-cent transaction fees. Transactions are faster than credit cards too.

...going to be useful on Halloween!

A "little" above my budget ;)

hm... but wouldn't they still fear death-experience? also, mind-on-usb != my-mind imho... (it could be a ctrl-c,v of my mind, but can be said as someone else with my thoughts?)

any video of the thing actually moving? Thanks!

um... use dependent types? sorry but I'm from different language background :(

Provable code would solve the root cause, yes. :) However, even with provable code, the proof actually has to be both correct and performed. There are too many competing factors that won't allow idris, for example, to actually work.

The result is that, as an industry, the Internet and the world's business are held together by twine, twist ties, and spaghetti code. Even this very webpage is just enough to work for most people a lot of the time.

so... I guess strong-AI-based coding is the only 100% sure way to go

(but... I'd be jobless if that were to happen :(

There are some insanely good architects and programmers. Even so, people write mistaken code, design with faulty assumptions, misinterpret business logic, use libraries and crypto incorrectly, etc. On top of all that, there is a small segment of coders who insert malicious code. They used to write for mayhem but now more for profit.

The terms are somewhat contentious, but AIs are more prone to use heuristics than traditional algorithms, which would add another layer of complexity.

So, we can't be certain that such an AI itself wouldn't create bugs. If anything, it would be easier to show that bugs would get created.

This is simply the state of software. We all deal with it in the ways we can, trying our best to minimize issues and add value.

Strong AI wouldn't be enough, if by strong AI you mean "enough to pass the Turing test". Humans pass the Turing test all the time, but still produce buggy software.

Or even just QuickCheck? (Hypothesis is an excellent implementation of the concept in Python, so you don't even need Haskell to get the goodness.)

Contracts, like they have in Racket, might also be interesting. They only fail at runtime, but it's easy for mere mortals to express interesting invariants and get good 'blame'.