Video: Sing Jan Swing - Kinetic Type
The flow of Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing" visualized by moving letters. Neat.
Sing Jan Swing - Kinetic Type by designer Krystina Burton on vimeo
The flow of Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing" visualized by moving letters. Neat.
Sing Jan Swing - Kinetic Type by designer Krystina Burton on vimeo
I inherited a simple Telegram bot from someone. The ease of programming these small things really makes programming fun again.
You don't need any more than plain python and the requests module to run it.
The SonyDevWorld bot
While working on the bot, I familiarized myself once again with deploying small isolated services with systemd and it's --user features. Pretty neat.
I also wrote a small ansible role to deploy the bot onto a server.
Calming, late-night highway music. Great for finding your inner peace in case you've lost track of it.
So we sit in empty rooms and dream our lives away
While the spirits come and go without a sound
Yeah just like you and me, they're tryin' to find a way, find a way, find a way home.
Posting this mainly so I don't forget myself. In German, because that's the way I learnt it.
See also: VDiff climbing
Man, does it feel great to run. I hadn't previously run more than five kilometers at a time regularly, but now I don't feel like I've even accomplished the bare minimum if I don't break ten. At some point, you don't even need music in your ears to keep you going, you just enter deeper into the zone.
Yes, this entry is pretty braggadocious. Noted.
I'm beginning to warm up to Bluegrass music. Damn shame the Banjo's so heavily associated with red-state hillbillies when in actuality it is a very demanding and soulful instrument. The lyrics are wandering into darker territory, a welcome change from Country banalities.
I’d rather re-watch 2001…
So much attention to detail, but fails on the larger points. It took me a while to understand what the story was even about.
Solid, but forgettable.
First Tarantino movie that made me realize he's actually still a child. Not because of violence fantasies or lazy non-/racism or whathaveyou, but because he can't let anything in his movies have an emotional impact. Even when a character dies, he just makes you go “huh”, shrug, and carry on.
Even lazier than vice news. I understand the circumstances of the creation might've been difficult, but what an insult. As Jackie Chan says: “Will you go into every theater and tell the audience how hard the shoot was?”
Kinda mesmerizing, mood-based rather than story-driven. Ryan Gosling is so bland, but somehow his movies always end up being very enjoyable, and his "character" somehow remains interesting.
Who would have thought the German film industry could produce a proper thriller? Quite nicely done. A bit outmoded in terms of plot - “Agent uncovers shady weapons deals with evil country, weapons industry and politics/spooks are conspiring, he wants to get the truth out” - but the pacing is good and the actors are performing well (for German standards).
It's got some good shots. The action and combat sequences were great, but the aftermath of the café bombing had the best one: An aerial shot of the city with a plethora of blue lights blinking in the near distance, an understated way to emphasize the state of emergency. The lakeside location was a good touch, and you immediately know it was in Bavaria because the onion-domed tower managed to squeeze into the shots. Another nice one: Behrens paying Lemke a visit in his flat. Lemke just wants his cigarettes, unperturbed by the threat of physical violence, and seems so happy to find them stashed on the ledge. Only when both men have calmed down does the exposition start - that's good pacing.
Scenes of military operations, drone footage, the intersection of the civilian, politics and military, high-ranking civilians involved in military operations - seems we as a society collectively have a hard-on for these things since Sicario. But then again, I also always think “Sicario did it better” with regards to the atmosphere of dread portrayed.
What I didn't like: How the characters were just thrown at the viewer in the briefing scene. You didn't really know who was who, and to the end I still was not clear about Rauhweiler's, Vossmeier's, Schilling's or Grünhagen's position, I thought they were all some medium-ranking underlings in the section. Only after the thing (no spoilers) happens to Grünhagen and did I realize he was the president of the BND, and it seems Rauhweiler was a hotshot on some government committee on weapons oversight with real influence.
Also, German films have a tendency to use disheveled appearance and lacking personal hygiene as a shorthand for toughness, and it's not working at all. Give your protagonist a proper shave at least.
Having Global Logistics be the mysterious cabal steering everything was lazy (and having it be only German seemed even lazier), but the reveal of it being just a cog in the global security machine worked well. Sadly, the resolution and Lemke’s explanations were rushed.
But all in all, very enjoyable. And finally a mature ending! Instead of the family-friendly “evildoers brought to justice”, some proper, believable devil’s advocating and then - revenge instead of “the truth”. That's grown-up cinema. Well done.
Doesn't it still miss the major sticking point; Google Play Services? That's not a problem for Huawei in their native China, where Google barely have a presence, but every western market consists of Android users who already have access to Google Play Services, and already have phones loaded with applications that take advantage of it.
Not having access to Google Play Services has historically crippled anyone who's tried to launch an alternative OS that could otherwise run Android apps.
Blackberry BB10 could run Android apps. Despite being a recognised and trusted name, Blackberry got nowhere with it.
Amazon launched the Fire phone, which was based on AOSP, ran Android apps, and even had it's own preexisting app store loaded with Android apps. In the end, Amazon couldn't give those phones away.
Samsung have Tizen; the in-house OS from the world's largest Android OEM. It too runs Android apps. Tizen's mobile market share is below 1%.
It's the Google Play Services that matter; not just the Android branding or access to Android apps.
Without Google Play Services, every developer whose app relies on location services will have to redevelop their app for whatever alternative location service Huawei provide.
Without Google Play Services, every developer will need to redevelop their app for whatever payment process Huawei provide for buying apps and making IAP's.
Without Google Play Services, any developer whose app relies on SafetyNet validation (nearly every banking app, many DRM related media apps) will need to redevelop their application for whatever alternative Huawei provides. It took years for banks to get onboard with things like mobile payments with Android; will they be any quicker with Huawei?
Without Google, any apps that rely on Firebase (Google estimates there are over a million devs using Firebase), will need to be redeveloped to work with whatever alternative Huawei can provide.
Without Google Play Services, any apps that run as app bundles will need to be redeveloped to run on Huawei devices.
What's the incentive for app developers to do any of the above, when they already have their hands full supporting hundreds of devices and billions of users in an established market?
Furthermore, without Google Play Services, any Android user moving to a Huawei device will lose the ability to backup and restore to their new Huawei device, making Huawei phones uniquely hard to migrate to.
None of the Huawei devices running their own OS will be able to Cast, or access Google Assistant. And, regardless of what OS Huawei use, none of them can be sold in the US.
Not to mention, any existing Android users who move to Huawei's in-house OS will need to repurchase the Android apps they already own, and the executive order blocking Google from engaging with Huawei applies to other US companies too; so in addition to Google's apps being unavailable, Huawei's app store won't include any apps by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, PayPal, Amex, etc.
Given the big names who have tried and failed without some of the disadvantages Huawei now face, and in light of the above challenges, how likely is Huawei to succeed here?
Commenter Jimk4003 on Huawai's plans to forge its own path without Google's Play Services