An anonymous reader writes: According to scientists, a single U.S. shale oil field is responsible for much of the past decade's increase in global atmospheric levels of ethane, a gas that can damage air quality and impact climate. The Bakken Formation, an oil and gas field in North Dakota and Montana is spewing nearly 2% of the globe's ethane. That translates to about 250,000 tons each year. "Two percent might not sound like a lot, but the emissions we observed in this single region are 10 to 100 times larger than reported in inventories. They directly impact air quality across North America. And they're sufficient to explain much of the global shift in ethane concentrations," said Eric Kort, U-M assistant professor of climate and space sciences and engineering.The Washington Post has more details (paywalled; alternatively you can read this Gizmodo report)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Performance These Days I argued that developer productivity is more important than the speed of a given language.

And while I wish for an Objective-C without the C and with the cool parts from Swift, I also realize that it’s not going to happen, and I’m fine with that.

* * *

I’m at the point where I get bugged if I have to write Objective-C code.

I don’t think I’m actually more productive in Swift yet, but that’s not the fault of Swift — that’s just how it goes when you switch languages and the previous language was your primary language for more than a decade.

Writing Swift code feels like driving a hot rod. Sometimes it feels like driving a hot rod into a brick wall. But still: it’s a goddamn hot rod.

If I had just two feature requests, they’d be:

1. Allow Set<SomeProtocol>. This is a major part of protocol-oriented programming for me. Comes up all the time.

2. Support KVC. (Note that I specify KVC and not KVO, which I don’t care for.) I use KVC only rarely, but when I use it it saves a ton of tedious, error-prone code.

Both of these issues keep me tied to some degree to Objective-C — or at least to NSObject and the Objective-C runtime — for now.

* * *

Okay, I have a third feature request. And it’s a big one. It’s kind-of for the Swift team, but it’s really for everyone who works on developer tools at Apple.

I’d like to see those teams look at a whole bunch of actual Xcode projects and source for shipping apps and do some analysis. Where do developers struggle? What takes too much work?

The goal is to use these projects to keep answering the question: how can writing high-quality apps be made easier?

It’s not enough to look at apps written inside Apple — these apps should come from outside. I’d bet that many developers would be happy to (confidentially, of course) submit their projects for this effort. I certainly would.

And it’s not enough just to hear what developers say. (Though that’s important too.) There’s no replacement for seeing what they actually do.

It’s kind of like when you work on performance issues. You may think you know what’s slow, but there’s no replacement for actually running the profiler and seeing what’s slow. Same with this: there’s nothing like actually seeing what problems need solutions.

Maybe this is already being done and I just don’t know about it. If so, then cool.

* * *

Did I mention that Swift is a hot rod? And I need to go work on some Objective-C code, and I’m procrastinating because it’s Objective-C and I want to go drive my fast car instead.

PS Daniel Jalkut suggests writing unit tests in Swift. Me, I’m writing all new code in Swift. But if you haven’t started writing with Swift yet, then you should listen to Daniel.

In Performance These Days I argued that developer productivity is more important than the speed of a given language.

And while I wish for an Objective-C without the C and with the cool parts from Swift, I also realize that it’s not going to happen, and I’m fine with that.

* * *

I’m at the point where I get bugged if I have to write Objective-C code.

I don’t think I’m actually more productive in Swift yet, but that’s not the fault of Swift — that’s just how it goes when you switch languages and the previous language was your primary language for more than a decade.

Writing Swift code feels like driving a hot rod. Sometimes it feels like driving a hot rod into a brick wall. But still: it’s a goddamn hot rod.

If I had just two feature requests, they’d be:

1. Allow Set<SomeProtocol>. This is a major part of protocol-oriented programming for me. Comes up all the time.

2. Support KVC. (Note that I specify KVC and not KVO, which I don’t care for.) I use KVC only rarely, but when I use it it saves a ton of tedious, error-prone code.

Both of these issues keep me tied to some degree to Objective-C — or at least to NSObject and the Objective-C runtime — for now.

* * *

Okay, I have a third feature request. And it’s a big one. It’s kind-of for the Swift team, but it’s really for everyone who works on developer tools at Apple.

I’d like to see those teams look at a whole bunch of actual Xcode projects and source for shipping apps and do some analysis. Where do developers struggle? What takes too much work?

The goal is to use these projects to keep answering the question: how can writing high-quality apps be made easier?

It’s not enough to look at apps written inside Apple — these apps should come from outside. I’d bet that many developers would be happy to (confidentially, of course) submit their projects for this effort. I certainly would.

And it’s not enough just to hear what developers say. (Though that’s important too.) There’s no replacement for seeing what they actually do.

It’s kind of like when you work on performance issues. You may think you know what’s slow, but there’s no replacement for actually running the profiler and seeing what’s slow. Same with this: there’s nothing like actually seeing what problems need solutions.

Maybe this is already being done and I just don’t know about it. If so, then cool.

* * *

Did I mention that Swift is a hot rod? And I need to go work on some Objective-C code, and I’m procrastinating because it’s Objective-C and I want to go drive my fast car instead.

PS Daniel Jalkut suggests writing unit tests in Swift. Me, I’m writing all new code in Swift. But if you haven’t started writing with Swift yet, then you should listen to Daniel.

There's no doubt that benchmark apps help you evaluate different aspects of a product, but do they paint a complete picture? Should we utterly rely on benchmark apps to assess the performance and quality of a product or service? Vlad Savov of The Verge makes an interesting point. He notes that DxOMark (a hugely popular benchmark app for testing a camera) rating of HTC 10's camera sensor is equal to that of Samsung's Galaxy S7, however, in real life shooting, the Galaxy S7's shooter offers a far superior result. "I've used both extensively and I can tell you that's simply not the case -- the S7 is outstanding whereas the 10 is merely good." He offers another example: If a laptop or a phone does well in a web-browsing battery benchmark, that only gives an indication that it would probably fare decently when handling bigger workloads too. But not always. My good friend Anand Shimpi, formerly of AnandTech, once articulated this very well by pointing out how the MacBook Pro had better battery life than the MacBook Air -- which was hailed as the endurance champ -- when the use changed to consistently heavy workloads. The Pro was more efficient in that scenario, but most battery tests aren't sophisticated or dynamic enough to account for that nuance. It takes a person running multiple tests, analyzing the data, and adding context and understanding to achieve the highest degree of certainty. The problem is -- more often than not -- gadget reviewers treat these values as the most important signal when judging a product, which in turn, also influences several readers' opinion. What's your take on this?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: The FBI has no idea how the hack used in unlocking the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone 5C works, but it paid a sum less than $1m for the mechanism, according to a report. Reuters, citing several U.S. government sources, note that the government intelligence agency didn't pay a value over $1.3m for purchasing the hack from professional hackers, as previously reported by many outlets. The technique can also be used as many times as needed without further payments, the report adds. The FBI director, James Comey, said last week that the agency paid more to get into the iPhone 5C than he will make in the remaining seven years and four months he has in his job, suggesting the hack cost more than $1.3m, based on his annual salary.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's no doubt that benchmark tools help you evaluate different aspects of a product, but do they paint a complete picture? Should we utterly rely on benchmark tools to assess the performance and quality of a product or service? Vlad Savov of The Verge makes an interesting point. He notes that DxOMark (a hugely popular benchmark tool for testing a camera) rating of HTC 10's camera sensor is equal to that of Samsung's Galaxy S7, however, in real life shooting, the Galaxy S7's shooter offers a far superior result. "I've used both extensively and I can tell you that's simply not the case -- the S7 is outstanding whereas the 10 is merely good." He offers another example: If a laptop or a phone does well in a web-browsing battery benchmark, that only gives an indication that it would probably fare decently when handling bigger workloads too. But not always. My good friend Anand Shimpi, formerly of AnandTech, once articulated this very well by pointing out how the MacBook Pro had better battery life than the MacBook Air -- which was hailed as the endurance champ -- when the use changed to consistently heavy workloads. The Pro was more efficient in that scenario, but most battery tests aren't sophisticated or dynamic enough to account for that nuance. It takes a person running multiple tests, analyzing the data, and adding context and understanding to achieve the highest degree of certainty. The problem is -- more often than not -- gadget reviewers treat these values as the most important signal when judging a product, which in turn, also influences several readers' opinion. What's your take on this?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.