• 6 Posts
  • 234 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Kagi generated key points:

    • The new Find My Device network on Android was designed with a strong focus on user security and privacy.
    • The network uses a crowdsourced approach to locate lost or misplaced devices and belongings, even when they are offline.
    • The location data reported by participating Android devices is end-to-end encrypted, ensuring Google cannot access or use the location information.
    • The network has “aggregation by default” as a safety feature, requiring multiple nearby devices to detect a Bluetooth tag before reporting its location to the owner.
    • The network also has protections to avoid contributing location reports when near the user’s home address.
    • Rate limiting and throttling are used to prevent malicious real-time tracking, while still allowing the network to be useful for finding lost items.
    • The network is compliant with industry standards for unwanted tracking, triggering alerts on both Android and iOS devices.
    • Users have full control over which of their devices participate in the network and how.
    • The network design has undergone internal security testing and is part of Android’s vulnerability rewards program.
    • Prioritizing user safety and privacy is an ongoing commitment as the team continues to improve the Find My Device protections.

  • Recently I had to do an update to the underlying environment a codebase ran on. This was a somewhat involved upgrade and took a longer period of time than most of our work usually does. I did it in a separate worktree, so I didn’t have to constantly rejuggle the installed dependencies in the project, and could work on two features relatively concurrently

    It also provides some utility for comparing the two versions. Nothing you couldn’t do other ways, but still useful







  • Kagi summary:

    • The Android Market (now Google Play Store) was launched in October 2008 with the T-Mobile G1 phone, helping establish app ecosystems on mobile.
    • Before app stores, finding and downloading apps was difficult through various online stores and carrier stores with limited selection and updates.
    • The Android Market centralized the app experience and discovery, giving access to a growing variety and number of apps in one place.
    • Early app successes helped drive more users, phones, developers and apps in a reinforcing cycle that grew the app economy exponentially.
    • Popular early apps filled gaps in Android’s capabilities in areas like weather, file management, flashlights as built-in features were still being developed.
    • Later apps brought extra abilities beyond necessities, like music streaming, ebooks, games, social media and more.
    • The article reminisces on the novelty of app stores and ecosystems in their early days compared to their ubiquitous presence today.
    • Over 100,000 apps were available by mid-2010 and over 3.5 million apps today on Google Play.
    • We now take app discovery, updates, and the overall app experience for granted due to how well app stores do their job.
    • The article credits the Android Market and Apple App Store for establishing apps as the norm and changing our expectations of mobile.




  • Google Messages.

    And yeah, I think it really has had that effect. Most people don’t know about it; I had to show my father how to set it up. They put a banner up on the app once when they introduce it, or when you first open Messages, but a ton of people just dismiss the banner and then don’t see it.

    Versus apple who has a big show where they show off all the new shit they’re doing, and the press breathlessly covers it, trickling it down to the average consumer.








  • An ad hoc sorting system for a grid of tiles on an enterprise app

    Instead of sorting across row wise, it sorted columnar. So it was

    A E I M
    B F J N
    C G K O
    D H L P
    

    Instead of

    A B C D
    E F G H
    I J K L
    M N O P
    

    This was a requirement from the CEO. Since we used this project (dogfooding) we stuck a secret search box/command palette in, which you could hit . and then type the name of the thing you wanted and click it