Gotta love feature creep. Music was not enough, let’s add podcasts, then add audiobooks, then add videos, now physical books.

Station Eleven takes place over a decade after a catastrophe, and has an unusual accepting-optimistic tone to it. Since it has been so long, people mellowed out, communities are slowly rebuilding (and rediscovering technology), and although there are some weirdos, it’s not the stereotypical Mad Max post-apocalypse.

IIRC Twitter introduced using # to make words searchable across all of the tweets, hence the name.

I did not get why people liked Midsommar.

Same idea of folk/cult horror, old The Wicker Man (1973) was more coherent, and had a point.

Makes perfect sense. This comment just made me realize English does not have a distinction between order and request. While, for example, in Russian, orders are said in indefinite tense (?). So when you order a dog to sit, you would say “to sit!” (сидеть!), or to order someone to stop, “to stand!” (стоять!). Another less formal way to order (usually a group) is to use “we” as the subject, for example, “[we are] not sitting, [we are] working” (не сидим, работаем)

Free, sure. There is only one app that does it, with huge dependency on Google and/or carrier (whoever runs the servers), which could just… stop working one day, like it did for me.

This looks so much better and easier than half-assing LACK tables and plywood/plexiglass together.

Just to add to the fun confusing acronyms, in 3D printing circles, IPA is isopropyl alcohol, not beer (india pale ale)

What specifically do you mean? If you are asking about you = u, to = 2, OK = k, and such, it’s text speak - faster to type and can fit more in 140 characters (SMS character limit IIRC)

But I agree that there is no reason to use those, especially on non-mobile devices.

I have been following https://linmob.net/ for news and developments. They do a good job aggregating from conferences, boards, HN, and reddit.

Absolutely loved Annihilation. I expected Roadside Picnic, but got Lovecraftian incomprehensible horrors, government conspiracies, and main character coming to terms with themselves and events in their life.

Authority is a bit different, but the feeling of dread and being lost is still present throughout the book.

Yes

Artemis is set in a colony on the Moon. Cool science and economy about running the colony, but writing was meh (if I have to read “head full of steam” for the third time…) and MC swears a lot in a juvenile and cringe way.

Here is one of iPad reuse projects

And here is a crazier and thorough project on replacing internals

TBF I considered using my old iPad2 as in-car navigation or just as permanently-on weather display or picture frame. (If battery doesn’t swell from being on all the time)

The feedback loops that local funding creates are vicious too:

desirable neighborhood -> higher prices -> more taxes -> better funded school -> desirable neighborhood (for families)

undesirable neighborhood -> low prices and no population increase -> worse funded school -> undesirable for families

As you said, next to one another. By sheer luck I happened to live in an apartment building that somehow belonged to a rich school district. Next building over was in the poor school district.

Apps like Google Messages

Samsung Messages, and… ???

Smartphones and tablets manufactured circa 2015 were powerful enough to run many apps and software, and not yet locked down as much as they are now. So there were a lot of custom ROMs and kernels being made for Android and jailbreaking tools for iDevices, allowing you to customize much much more than the manufacturer intended.

And it’s just fun to make something that most people consider “obsolete” perform well, or well enough to be usable.

Not sure what role gender plays into that though.

So when you receive a call from a friend or family member, you’re greeted by something more visually interesting than the generic incoming call screen.

??? Displaying caller’s photo (from your contact list) has been standard functionality since… a long time ago. What is this trying to achieve?

Large companies can do / have done that (dumping) to drive out smaller competition.

Small companies usually cannot afford this.

Unless you can pitch this as a disruptive idea to gullible investors (looking at all tech startups that burn trillions without making profits)

Soviet-era sci-fi, The Final Circle of Paradise (Хищные Вещи Века) by Strugastky brothers.

It’s really weird. MC poses as a writer in a peaceful resort town while investigating a case, but the townsfolk are just strange and unpleasant. There is a conflict between “intels” (high society type of people) and regular people, but it is still unclear if anyone is in the right.