# Showerthoughts

Bored, browsing mobile app developer jobs. Surprised that you can pull $100k/year from mobile app development.

Appstore == Rootkit

(ever thought of it this way?)

Android app development: Be forced to use an excessively complex build system that tries to squeeze every byte out of your compiled code like it’s 1980, then adds a compat library that’s 10 times the size of the actual app.

sigh

Just because I need to probe devices with DummyDroid. Currently, I gather the needed information d by pushing a tiny DEX file (~50kb) to the device and talk directly to the various system services via IBinder (that’s what shell tools like pm do, too). But of course, for some strange reason, the AIDL files are not standardized, so this solution is unstable. I really need a Context, a Context can only be build by an ActivityThread and there’s no way to start one directly from ADB - the whole system was designed by lunatics.

OK Google, why is my third grader so bad at reading and writing?

⌛

Hello $NAME, children learn from their parents. You have shown your child how to use Google Now. Voice search is a feature that enables you ask a question and get a spoken answer. There’s no more reason to read or write yourself!

(True story, actually - the part about bringing kids up to be lazy)

Whenever I see MS Office and Open Office fanboys argue which is the better product, I always picture a scene in a hardware store where two guys argue which hammer to buy in order to drive screws into the wall.

When you want to print your writing, use LaTeX, just saying.

PSA for those, thinking that privacy shouldn’t matter all that much during the COVID-19 crisis:

On average, every infected person passes the virus on to 2 to 3 others. For your “victims” that spells 14 days home alone without sex. Plenty of downtime to ponder who’s responsible.

HTTP 402 Payment required. I wonder — if that one had been properly implemented from the beginning, would the web have become a better or a worse place?

Isn’t it strange? Even on Android, we still use the floppy disk icon to convey “save”. No device ever had a disk drive and by now, most users probably never handled a floppy to begin with.

Something went utterly wrong with the app ecosystem. Sure, if you can’t trust code, you sandbox it, but Android and IOS Sandbox everything. Why has it become the norm for Joe Average to deal with untrusted code?!