OsmAnd is better than Google Maps

I am using a HTC One M7 phone and to maximise battery life, I have mine configured to not use WiFi+Data to determine location. Because of this, Google Maps gets in a pouty mess and refuses to work even though it may use the GPS to directly acquire the location. OsmAnd doesn't throw such tantrums and works fine.
I should note that this tantrum of Google Maps appears to be a recent change, possibly related to their "show nearby offers" feature. In any case, it is a huge step backwards in functionality.

Do no evil, Google?

Actually, I'd settle for "no regression".

I can no longer recommend Google Maps for mapping on Android. It is broken. However, Open Street Maps' OsmAnd works great and did not balk when used 6500 miles apart without rebooting the phone.

Dear HTC, a suggestion for M9

If only they'd listen...

Dear HTC,

Please bring back the pogo-pin dock connectors for charging and auto-pairing to Bluetooth audio devices.

I do enjoy your HTC One (M7) phone but the lack of pogo-pin connectors was a disappointment; I lived with it but I do not like the daily wear on the micro USB connector.

I was further disappointed when you launched the One successor (M8) without it either. As a result, I'm willing to wait and see what your M9 offering brings - I can wait.

We know you can do it - your HTC Nexus One had the pogo pins for its docks but possibly, the lack of documentation over it was disappointing, even though it is somewhat trivial to reverse engineer.

Please reintroduce the pogo pins for charging and docks in your future phones.

Thanks,

Antony.

#HTC
#HTCOne

Thought for the day:

Here is a thought for today:

People will try to use every feature of a product to be "cool".
Therefore, any build tool which permits circular dependencies is a broken tool.

What does the interwebs think?

Internet and net-neutrality.

I think that the word, internet, should be restricted to mean networks which allow free and equal access for packets from other networks... As in an "inter-network network".
Networks which do not permit free and equal networks should be named for their controlling interest. So company owned and moderated networks, like Comcast, which limit bandwidth or filter content are not "internets" but are, in Comcast's case, Comcast's network which has a moderated gateway to the internet. Similarly, people in China or Turkey don't have internet service providers: they have "turknet" or "chinet" service providers which has a moderated gateway to the internet.
I think we do need to make this distinction so that users are not misled.

I don't care for Gradle.

I could vote for GRADLE-2496 but to be honest, I don't like Gradle enough to create an account just to vote for this issue. Given that the bug was first reported in 2012, few others care enough, too.

Useless error messages

From the annuals of useless error messages:

Executed 0 tests: 0 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
Unexpected exception thrown.
:integration-test-impl -- Executed 0 tests: 0 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
:compileJava FAILED

10 second thoughts: Gradle

In my opinion, Gradle is a bad idea, implemented poorly. It should never take dozens of gigabytes of RAM and many tens of minutes, just to load its config files and determine that the command asked was mistyped.