Thanks, there is some attempt in the code to auto select US/Canada date format if the user's timezone is in the USA or Canada, but I didn't actually test it to see if it is activated correctly. Any US user's able to chime in if it does?
Even if it works, I'll probably take your suggestion add a tip below the date to clarify the date format for the user's first session.
What do you consider the Canadian format? Most people I know prefer YYYY-MM-DD as it's non ambiguous. Anytime you see XX-XX-YYYY (or XX-XX-XX) it could just as easily be be little endian or weird American.
The intention is to present dates the way they often are found in that country (not just the "gold standard"). From my understanding Canadians often encounter dates in all three formats you noted (although often using named months to avoid ambiguity).
All three date formats are used in Weekle when set to Canadian mode, and fully numeric d/m/y or m/d/y dates are only used if the date is >12 to avoid ambiguity.
The initial popup dialogue shows the default locale setting with a "change" button right next to it, and it can be changed at any time on the settings tab.
Thanks, that's a good point that it does not clearly explain the use of that table. I will update the page soon to explain that the table cell represents the last 2 digits of a year, and the left column is the result of the year calculation for that year. The table has only 28 years in it since any year 28 or higher can be simplified by subtracting 28, 56 or 84.
I recommend only attempting to memorise the table after you are already able to calculate the year number using the normal algorithm.
It seems a bit extreme to offer apps one of two extremes: either my sub-metre location or no location at all. It seems the reasonable default for location sharing should be something like sharing the rough suburb that I'm in. This solves most use-cases such as showing closest store locations, delivery options, dating apps showing nearby matches, etc. It's only the occasional navigation app that needs to know exactly where the user is located.
I specifically get directions “home” to a neighbor’s house a bit away. Once I know where I am, I kill Google Maps. I’m sure they could, if they wanted to badly enough, figure the whole thing out, but at least my profile has a certain amount of uncertainty (though what utility that has is probably debatable).
I would love to be able to fuzz my location within a certain (randomized?) radius of my home for certain apps. Strava has a ‘privacy circle’ that essentially accomplishes this when sharing GPX tracks of runs around one’s home. An OS-level feature would be fantastic in many cases.
The wifi and cell towers your phone can see, so even without using GPS.
If you enable the location services of google, it keeps a history which is typically within 50 meters, within a few minutes accurate (at least in a city).
What google tracks if you disable location services, I don't know.
Just so you know, if you're using regular Google-infused Android, then depending on how you ‘kill’ Maps it may still be running in the background. And it may start in the background without you running the app.
I'd also bet that Google's other apps transmit your location anyway―if only because other apps use it too―and that it's not necessarily reflected in the timeline in the web profile.
I have a different maps app (Yandex) that keeps popping up in the process list despite me killing it off with ‘force stop.’ Probably not the only one, for that matter.
Flicking an app in the recent apps list doesn't close its background processes. And you won't see it there when such a process runs again. See e.g. the ‘OS Monitor’ app for the actual list of processes (for Android ≤6).
Google's apps are likely even more privileged. Play Store hogs the processor and network every time I enable wifi. On a past phone, Google Maps also ran conspicuously on boot and, iirc, when wifi was turned on.
Something might've changed in newer versions of Android, dunno. But I doubt it that Google would limit its own abilities.
> I would love to be able to fuzz my location within a certain (randomized?) radius of my home for certain apps
I'm not sure about the details of the implementation but with location you still want something reasonably accurate. So the random radius can't vary too wildly. After you collect enough data points couldn't you infer the real location from that circle?
That's a good feature but quite different, if the user is at home when they need to use the app that first time then it reveals where the user lives and possibly personally identifies them.
Your IP address when on WiFi almost certainly can be connected to a specific address by a databroker. That doesn't mean location shouldn't be limited in resolution, but there are other ways to get the same thing.
Isn’t is usually SSIDs that are used for location mapping of WiFi access points. The mapping cars gather that information when they’re doing street view stuff.
There is a difference between sharing your IP address with a data broker to maybe get your location (which may not even be possible with GDPR?), and having your exact GPS coordinates sent directly to your database.
Oh, you’re right of course, I was misremembering that they won’t be able to get the ssids of nearby wifi networks. However, a vpn is a solution to the ip address problem.
People are actually working on something very similar to this in research [1]. By applying random noise to location data the user's individual privacy can be protected while still allowing for collection of usage (or in this case location) statistics etc. This is the key idea behind local differential privacy (which Apple also uses to collect anonymous statistics on usage data [2]).
Yahoo's Fireagle was an attempt to make a "Location broker" for apps. You could allow applications as much or as little detail as you like. I think it was a product before it's time.
Would this be possible with todays phone and hardware etc?
> Is the 'light' reflecting off the asteroid emitted from the sun? I had never seen or even knew radar could distinguish value like what is shown here.
Yes it's emitted from the sun, it's clear given that the time-lapse shows "Inner moon eclipsed" when passing behind the site of the asteroid that is not lit.
I was always under the assumption that with Radar images that it didn't rely on a light source as technically the radar is the source. So that the impression that there is a light an dark side was based purely on the motion towards and away from the receiver.
But, you have pointed out something interesting and that would appear to indicate other wise. The clear rotation independent of source already shows that I am wrong on that.
You are correct, the "light" is the transmitted radar pulse from Goldstone, not from the sun.
They do all sorts of fancy signal processing to get this sort of resolution.
Because radar power received goes down with 1/(distance^4), the inverse square law, squared, this is hard to do at astronomical distances.
The power level differential between transmitted and received power can be in the order of ~10^15.
Goldstone transmits a 500kW radio pulse but will probably get nanowatts back, which is amplified millions of times by the big dish, amplifiers and signal processing.
There are two things: the radar images are created with radio waves emitted by the radar installation. The second thing is that the visualisation shows a light source. They are unrelated to each other. I assume that the light source was added during rendering of the film and that it approximates the sun.
I don't either :) but sort of a silly question I guess. I presumed it was the sun due to the angle of illumination as well as common sense that the sun is probably the brightest object in the solar system along multiple bands of light; I was really just amazed at the relatively large amount of detail in the image.
Well, if the illumination was from the radio telescope, then the moon would be hidden behind the parent asteroid when it is eclipsed. We would not see it go dark, it would just be obscured.
That's just an artifact of the visualization; the point of view is above the north pole of Florence, which points decidedly away from Earth (probably +/- a few degrees from normal to the plane of the ecliptic).
Paradoxically, respecting the wishes of the dead is more about empowering the living. If there are no such guarantees then people alive will take actions to enforce their wishes past their death.
In the context of Wills, that would mean more people would transfer their estate before their death. In the context of Facebook, it would mean some people may delete certain data (or in some cases delete their entire account) if they don't want the data discovered after they die.
I don't know if it is related to the constitutional issue, but someone was convicted of having Simposons pornography because it pictured child characters from the show.
The UK, Canada, NZ etc. and otger countries (to a weaker extent) have similar laws. It is ridiculous in my view.
Depends on the application of this, i.e. whether the total is more important or the individual values are more important.
Example: You're filling out a timesheet for a contracting job, and you worked 8 hours on several different tasks for your client, but your client's software rounds things to the nearest hour, then it would make sense to use an algorithm like this if your pay was going to be determined by this data entry. If your pay was not determined by this data entry then it may make sense to just round normally.
The goal of the web app is more about the practice modes and daily game, people are free to use Doomsday for these if they like.