That’s interesting about Gravity’s Rainbow.

I had the exact opposite reading Cryptonomicon: it was not bad and sometimes rather interesting to read, but looking back, it was 900 pages of wannabe hackers and WWII dudes, tied together with barely 100 pages worth of plot.

I hate to be that guy, but if FairPhone aims to reduce waste, be modular and repairable, why are there 6 models of them? Are they inter-compatible? What hardware (other than 5G antenna) changed since the first/second one? Even if it did, could it have been replaced (upgraded) on the original model?

Not necessarily a dig at the manufacturers, but I wish collectively we would stop chasing more features / CPU / RAM, stuck with something for a decade, and made existing software more efficient instead.

I use it occasionally, when writing lists with lots of detail, or to separate parts of the sentence where I already used multiple commas.

there are many thought-provoking ideas about conscience, the human brain, and alien life; yet it is wrapped in a mediocre sci-fi action movie script

Finishing the Imperial Radch sci-fi trilogy (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) by Ann Leckie. Despite the agender language feature (everyone is addressed as she) the books deal more with colonialism, imperialism, and personal identity, rather than gender. Writing style is very information-dense, lots of thoughts and actions happening simultaneously. Compared to other science fiction that I read, it gets much more into the cultural and interpersonal situations, especially the second book.

Revelation Space series (specifically the “future” part: Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap) might not have the best writing, but the wild (and sometimes insane) ideas and scale of everything is great.

Late Soviet Union might be a similar to what you are looking for? I wasn’t alive back then, but from what I recall from reading old science magazines as a kid, there were few home computers, lots of “radio-hobbyist” stuff (DIY electronics from radio to computers), and praise for “inventor and rationalizer” for the good of the people. On paper at least. I think most interpersonal communication was over the phone or amateur radio, or even telegrams.

I don’t know much about how modern China goes about it though.

But TBF it’s very difficult to speculate about message encryption. Thinking back from my own experience, digital communication (over the internet or even SMS over cell phone networks) was not common until 90s-2000s, and encrypting them became a concern not too long ago, early 2010s I think? Before that, it was HTTP (without the S) and unencrypted AIM chats over the Jabber protocol.

My friend works for a startup that does exactly that - trains AIs on conversations and responses from a specific person (some business higher-ups) for purposes of “coaching” and “mentoring”. I don’t know how well it works.

It’s a Librem5 phone with cringe name and 100% markup, but it’s their own product nonetheless. I.e. it is not a generic Android with a custom skin and preinstalled apps like Trump Phone, Freedom Phone, or Quantum Internet box.

You can buy pretty much the same Librem5 assembled in China for ~$700. Take a look at Liberux Nexx Linux phone too (they are just staring out)

(Not sure what you’re calling racist here, appeal to “patriots”?)

Another interesting exploration is in Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter. New technology allows creating light-passing micro-wormholes at any location (and time!), erasing privacy nearly entirely. At first, tabloids run wild with “shocking” photos of famous people, but eventually the hype dies. There are people who outright do lewd things in public (“anyone can see me at any time anyway”), some go about their life as usual, and some join secret groups who meet in the dark and use touch language for the deaf-blind.

IMO the best on-boarding I have seen in a chat app. Just scan each other’s QR codes or click a link. No account management because ID is unique to each conversation.

Signal and WhatsApp need a phone number, Matrix/Element is needlessly messy, XMPP/Conversations is sensible IIRC (ID + password)

That’s the intent, at least:

Are you intending to ship a (close to) mainline kernel, or a Board Support Package (BSP)/vendor kernel and make it work with a libhybris/Halium approach?

We’ll go with bare-metal Linux—no Halium, no libhybris. We want to stay as close to mainline as possible and actively contribute upstream.

Haven’t been asked yet, but company is in process of adding “AI” (as ambiguous as that) into many business processes. (Presented right after presentation on sustainability…)

I know many developers love LLMs, but they seem so useless to me - LLM is not gonna fix tech debt, wonky git issues or know how to query a complex 20+ year old DB. I have access to a LLM and would not know what to ask that I could not do myself.

Don’t Equifax, Experian and Transunion already have that?

At least they have enough info about where you lived, what credit cards you had, what loans you had, what vehicles you owned, enough to be used as “verification” to prove your identity.

(I haven’t really used them a lot in the heat yet) Last enclosure was ASA, but AFAIK, black ABS is OK too because black pigment absorbs most of the light/UV, preventing plastic from degrading as fast

For offline navigation on Linux, have you looked at osmin? It was pretty decent on a PinePhone.

How do you handle power-off? Does Raspberry Pi just shut down? My thoughts were to use Alpine or some RAM-based OS that would not corrupt SD card or the hard drive.

I have been messing around with building an in-car navigation from e-waste for a while now. Right now, I settled on an old smartphone with OsmAnd and wrote my own app to view the reverse camera.

Honestly, plain old ignorance. (and some anglo-centrism)

I am a software dev, worked on two translation projects at different points in time, and both of them were kind of a mess. In one case, translation team was all Americans (US company), and I was the only person who spoke another language and had firsthand experience with bad translation in media. When I asked how to switch the language in their app, senior dev told me to switch my OS language. Translations themselves often sounded overly verbose, robotic, or plain weird in other languages.

And then, the typical oversights like not leaving enough screen space for longer translated text, using ambiguous terms without providing context, badly splitting phrases. Text-in-image, etc.

I don’t know much about cars either, but that does happen. For example, Cadillac Escalade was/is based on a less-fancy-looking GMC SUV (Suburban?). Chevy Volt is also Cadillac ELR (different body and interior, same drivetrain), Opel Ampera (in Europe), and Buick Velite (in China, because Buick has a better brand recognition there)

Some cheaper car models come with variety of “sport editions” and out-of-factory tint and spoilers, which would be the equivalent to the RGB computer peripherals that you mentioned, and appeal to specific customers.

TBH I don’t know why some expensive car designs are perceived as “fancy” or “impressive”. I think they are mostly boring. And quality-wise, anything above bottom tier would have materials that last decades now.

Organic Maps / CoMaps is not some corporate platform, you “migrating” to them does not gain them anything. If you have a constructive suggestion, open an issue or contact them.

I’ve actually had designers come to me with a concept for “a visual indicator that shows the user how they are progressing through the page”

I have seen those on blog and news sites, a thin horizontal bar (sometimes under the floating title) that fills as you scroll to the bottom. I don’t get it either.

I see Microsoft Dynamics 365 and would like to introduce you its little brother: Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The language is C/AL, offshoot of Pascal, code editor does not support multi-line selection (let alone any features like highlighting or navigation), and source code control is managed by locking files.