Fortnite and Minecraft are huge ip though.

Right, but they created their own huge-ness instead of buying it from something else that was already huge.

I don't think of the style as dated. If you think of Portal 2 as a continuation of the style on a tangent, it's just heading in it's own unique direction. Portal 2 still feels far ahead of today's AAA games in various aspects.

Comparing the HH style directly to other FPS just doesn't seem right.

First off, Portal 2 was eight years ago. That's a long time and mainstream consumer expectations for what a video game should offer have changed a lot over those eight years.

Secondly, I know plenty fans of HL/HL2 who found the tone/direction of Portal 2 distressing because it was too self-aware or whatever. I don't really agree with that, but it's a point of view that's been circulating around for years. I think a lot of fans have come to terms with HL3 never being released. Continuing to not release HL3 has little apparent risk. Less risk than releasing it and making something a bunch of people will either hate or ignore. So I don't think they will.

I have the MI A2 (~$230). It's spec'd very similarly to the Pixel 3a and has stock Android. It's been available for almost a year now.

Cool. I had thought all of Xiaomi's phones came with MIUI. I didn't know they sold this Android One Device as well.

Do you have a portfolio site? I had a 5 year hiatus from dev work and got a high paying software job within a year of trying.

1. Read numerous hacker news comments for advice.

2. Did freelance work for cheap but targeted jobs that I could learn highly desired skills (React, webpack, etc..)

3. Built a portfolio site with freelance work examples.

4. Applied to tons of jobs and got one.

I also had to try extremely hard and live in Seattle which helps too. To be honest by the sound of your post your mind set is in a not so great place which is understandable.

Perseverance

I don't have experience with Dragon or Siri, but Google Assistant has been improving at a noticable pace and for me seems seems to recognize at least 90% correct.

I'd assume (hope) they mean to infer data and not invent it.

Was on pololee's team as well. We were all crushed because the team was only a few months old and were we just all getting to know each other well.

Wouldn't the loss of close integration between Google's ads business and services decrease their respective values though?

Ideally it would directly and immediately decrease their values by the amount they were effectively extracting due to their monopoly position.

Yet gmail and maps are slower than warm asphalt.

You can't escape Gmail because you'd lose your address, and you can't escape Maps because the alternatives suck.

On the other hand if I don't like Supermarket-X, I can go to Supermarket-Y

Can't you get another email address and forward your google mail to it, and then phase out usage of the gmail address? That's what I've done.

Or your were lucky enough to start using Gmail with your own domain, when Google Apps was still free for up to 10 users, and can still use it for free.

Google Apps with a custom domain was once free for as many email accounts as you were approved for. There are a handful out there with lots more than 10 free accounts. They don’t get support, have less space provided, and can’t use the outlook connector so it’s not an equal comparison. It’s nice that google hasn’t changed this on their users.

Zoho recently restricted their free custom domain service for email. Not sure who is the best free option out there now.

I have my own domain name through Google apps and use a naive mail client to access gmail. As soon as the handful of people I talk to exclusively on hangouts migrate elsewhere, I'm ditching Google as a back-end. I'd never have predicted this in 2008. Back then Google still cared about UI speed.

Ya this kinda sumarizes the Crux of the problem pretty well. I'm getting a bit worn with seeing anti JavaScript what nots on HN. It's here to stay guys for better or worse (and will proceed to consume UI development _everywhere_)