Meanwhile, though Google Assistant runs on iOS, its very limited and cant be activated without opening an app. Siri wont run at all on Android. A noisy cheer went up from the crowd of hackers clustered around the voting machine tucked into the back corner of a casino conference roomtheyd just managed to. It wasnt always like this, Don Santora told me. And it wasnt supposed to be like this. Alexa and Cortana Teamed Up, But Consumer Tech Is Still Stuck in an Ecosystem War. The voice interfaces Cortana and Alexa will soon be able to activate each other for functions that one does better than the other, Amazon and Microsoft announced today. Its the kind of cooperation that we dont see enough between the Big Five, or really any company thats grown out of its desperately cobble together partnerships so we look relevant phase and into its abandon all cooperation that doesnt lock customers into our shitty ecosystem phase. Cortana and Alexas competitors, Google Assistant and Siri, wont be integrating any time soon. As Gizmodo notes, Google and Apple have far more users locked into their ecosystems, so they have far less incentive to cooperate with competing systems. By combining forces, Microsoft and Amazon are admitting theyve lost the war for mobile, the dominant user interface now, and holding onto their own core competencies Microsoft for business communication, Amazon for consumption. Meanwhile, though Google Assistant runs on i. OS, its very limited and cant be activated without opening an app. Every nerd loves a good tech war Windows vs Mac, Apple vs Android, Intel vs AMD. They give us something to armchair argue about over beers with friendsor to rant. Siri wont run at all on Android. And even on its native platform, Siri wont control best in class apps like Spotify, Gmail, or Google Maps. Google Assistant is more flexible, but it cant order things on Amazon the way Alexa can. You can run Alexa on Android, but only through Amazons app, and again with limitations. Your device also wont play well with a competing desktop OS Apples Handoff and i. Cloud make i. Phones and Macs work together seamlessly, whereas coordinating an Android phone with a Mac is clunky, and plugging an i. CPT-PIC-1024x576.jpg' alt='Epic War 5 Hacked Exp And All Units Of Liquid Volume' title='Epic War 5 Hacked Exp And All Units Of Liquid Volume' />Phone into a Windows machine is eye twitchingly uncomfortable, thanks to Apples lousy Windows port of i. Tunes. The TV ecosystem is just as bad, largely thanks to Amazons own selfish decisions. Amazon still hasnt released its promised Apple TV app, so Prime customers have to stream Transparent and Curb Your Enthusiasm from their phones. There are no plans for an Amazon app on the Chromecast, or for Spotify on Apple TV. You can retreat to a third party media player like Roku, but then you cant play videos purchased through i. Tunes without a wonky file conversion. Starting at the end of this month, Amazon will no longer sell the Chromecast or Apple TV. Epic War 5 Hacked Exp And All Units Of Liquid' title='Epic War 5 Hacked Exp And All Units Of Liquid' />AndRead more Read. Meanwhile, Facebook runs around kind of integrating with all these other services while trying to push its own messaging and sharing platforms, and burying every post that dares link to You. Tube or Twitter. As a customer choosing a phone, computer, and media player, youre stuck with three choices Buy into an ecosystem that inevitably has some crappy elements. You could choose Google, and miss out on Apples slick interface and seamless desktop to mobile integration. Or choose Apple, lose a lot of third party functionality, and get locked into increasingly bizarre design choices your Lightning headphones wont work on your laptop and inferior software like Apple Maps, Mail, and Calendar. On desktop, choose Windows and miss out on that same integration, or choose Apple, pay more for the same computing power, and get your computer games a year late. Straddle ecosystems, running the Google Suite instead of MS Office and hooking your i. Phone up to your PC or your Android to your Mac. Run Spotify, buy an Echo, and live with their limited capabilities. Maybe even run Excel on OS X. All but the most basic users reach outside their main ecosystem at some point. Install Linux on your Chromebook, jailbreak your i. Phone, run Cortana on your Fit. Bit, hack your Echo to play Tidal, and write a viral Medium post encouraging people to unplug. In the short term, all these companies have good reasons to lock up their platforms wherever they still think they can steal market share from the others, and wherever they would rather focus resources on improving their own service instead of handing millions of customers to their competitors through a partnership. But in the long term, this lock in keeps the Big Five from innovating, their products leaning on the crutch of the ecosystem, alienating customers who will then abandon the ecosystem for third party services like Spotify, Dropbox, Whats. App, 1. Password, and Overcast. OS has a bunch of great podcast managers these days, but after testing all of them, our favoriteRead more Read. Historically, these ecosystems tend to open up, making way for the next battle. Macs and PCs didnt always run so many of the same apps. Internet Explorer and Netscape were much more mutually exclusive than Chrome and Safari. And for a while, your Internet came in flavors of AOL, Prodigy, or Compu. Serve. Even Android and i. OS used to have zero apps in common. But each time, interoperability won out, bringing most of each platforms strengths to everyone. But things could get worse before they get better. The Big Five are all racing to win at online payments, wearables, AI, AR, VR, smart homes, smart cars, and the growing Internet of Things. And as long as each company thinks it can win, it will try to push out the others instead of playing nice. Eventually there will be winners and losers, or decentralized cooperation. Every now and then, a new protocol will open up thats as decentralized as email or HTTP. And the giants of the day will move onto a new fight. In the meantime, theres nearly always some way to force the ecosystems to play together, at the expense of simplicity and not having your shit constantly break. Theres always some third option to jimmy into the gap and outperform all the defaults. And thats what Lifehackers all about. The Cultural War Over Americas Most Ticketed Car ShowIt wasnt always like this, Don Santora told me. And it wasnt supposed to be like this. H2. 0i, the annual car show in Ocean City, Maryland that Jalopnik declared the most ticketed car show Read more Read. The massive crowds, the traffic stops, the tickets, the towing. The bad reputation. H2. O International, what was once just a big Volkswagen and Audi show, has become the worlds most ticketed car show. You only had one or two guys doing a burnout to show off, but today is much different, he said. Indeed, a quick You. Tube search will result in video after video of burnouts on public roads during H2. Oi. You got people telling people, were going down to party, Santora continued. And thats what people think you do just go down to Ocean City and there are no rules. Thats what its turned into. Officially, H2. Oi not happening this year. But according to multiple people Jalopnik spoke with, it wont keep people from coming down to Ocean City to hang out with their fellow car enthusiasts. What that event will look like this year, without H2. Oi officially happening, remains to be seen. For two decades now, as September faded into October and the last of the beachgoers retreated from Ocean City, MD, a different kind of crowd settled in. One that reveled in cars with cambered tires and underglow. Big wings and loud exhausts. Three piece wheels. When you saw these cars start rolling up and down Coastal Highway, then you knew H2. Oi was underway. The atmosphere at this massive car show is open and inviting. Its comprised of groups of different kinds of car enthusiasts coming together for about a week to hang out and soak up the automotive atmosphere. Make new friends. See old ones. Smoke some pot. Swap parts and ideas. Subarus share space with Audis that share space with BMWs that share space with Volkswagens that share space with Hondas. Because why not Summers just ended and falls around the corner. Too soon, people on the East Coast will be putting their cars away for the winter or prepping for the salt. But the trend that emerged in recent years is that many of the stanced and lowered cars attending the event do not, according to police, adhere to Marylands vehicle safety standards. And some owners have a habit of showing off and doing burnouts. So cops can be seen posted on nearly every street corner, handing out citations. We dubbed H2. Oi the most ticketed car show in America when we went for a look last year because thats exactly what we saw. Based off of posts uploaded to the now deleted Instagram page OCPDRoll. Call, it appeared that certain attendees of H2. Oi regarded getting served a citation as a type of masochistic trophy. The question wasnt if his car would get impounded. We knew was going to happen the moment we sawRead more Read. Jalopnik Features Editor Raphael Orlove reported at the time If I were one for grand declarations, and I am, Id call it the most ticketed car show in the country, if not the world. Take a single drive down the citys main drag, Coastal Highway, and youll see a good four or five cars, at least, pulled over and getting cited. And this is true day or night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before even H2. Oi officially starts on the weekend. Then, expect to see a good four or five cars getting pulled over on any drive longer than two blocks. But old timers are quick to remind people that this wasnt how H2. O always was. Far from it. And many of them arent happy with the reputation it has now. When H2. Oi first started, it was an Ocean City sanctioned event, a show exclusively for Volkswagen and Audis where the cars were judged at the end and trophies were awarded. It was never held in Ocean City, but rather in a neighboring area. In part, it was started to help build the VW and Audi community, to give those owners a safe, exclusive environment in which to display their cars. Turbo C For Windows 7 32 Bit Softpedia there. Over time, the event grew. Attendees with all sorts of different cars started turning up. Santora, one of the owners and builders at Tuning Works, recalled that this is approximately where some of the problems began to happen. Jamie Orr, a moderator for popular Volkswagen forum VWVortex who also helps connect H2. Oi with the VW community, said its gotten to the point where downtown Ocean City gets taken over by gearheads. You cant even get a hotel room. Thats what makes this so magical for all marques, he insisted. Yet, he also admitted that within the last four or five years, its attracted a lot of people who might not even know there is an actual showwho think that cruising up and down and hanging out on Coastal Highway is the main attraction. Because at some point along the way, H2. Oi split into two events the official VW and Audi show and the unsanctioned car meet, open to all, not sponsored by H2. Oi and sprawling through Ocean Citys main drag. This meet is most likely what you think of when you think of H2. Oi. Its here that you see the majority of the burnouts and the stunting and the ticketing. Here is where youll find the people who want the notoriety of getting a citation, the people who get a thrill from it. Orr insisted that this is not representative of what H2. Oi started out to be. This years event, according to event sponsors, has been postponed until 2. But all this means is that the official H2. Oi VW and Audi event wont be happening. The ones who will make the journey, who had no intention of attending that event, will continue on, their plans unchanged. Both Orr and Santora are certain that thousands of people will still turn up. Indeed, a search of hotels in the area show that in the last weekend of September, when the event was to be held, many are close to full. The venue where the official event took place has changed over the years. Last years location changed hands and new zoning ordinances were put down, which prevented H2. Oi from holding its event there again this year. Ultimately, the show was unable to secure a location in time and forced to cancel. You have to wonder, though, if serious police concerns from past events factored into these new zoning rules. Ocean City has a history of car events, but recently, the death of a motorcyclist doing wheelies during the Crusin event in May 2. Most everyone who attends H2. Oi, whether it be the sanctioned or unsanctioned aspects of it, appear to only want to go and have a good time. They dont wish to cause trouble for others. But because the unsanctioned arm of H2. Oi has grown so large, its difficult to police, both internally and externally. Its not like the event itself hasnt tried, either. A excerpt of a post written in 2. H2. Oi Facebook page reads To the ones who think H2. Oi is a FREEFORALL and no rules or laws exist while attending H2. Oi and staying in OCMD I hope to make this crystal clear I dont want you, the VWAudi community doesnt want you and Ocean City doesnt want you So please stay home if you cannot control yourself and act like normal, respectful adults. Whats unfortunate is that this year, the original event was cancelled, while the public one will be in full swing in a couple of weeks. According to Santora, there are only a handful of big Volkswagen events in the United States and H2. Oi was the one that everybody was looking forward to most. Hes still goinghe has friends to seebut hes disappointed. Clearly, both Orr and Santora are in deep within the Volkswagen community. And as OG attendees of H2.