beyondcompute

This somehow almost feels me with awe even thought I am somewhat a cynical person. It’s another level of demonstrating how intricate life is, how powerful evolution can be and how incredibly well-tuned our (Earth) environment for these sorts of things (which seems to be in stark contrast with what we see elsewhere).

“Dummy Display Plug” sounds like something from Neon Genesis Evangelion. :)

Are they though? They are no better than placebo. But are they better than doing nothing? And if they are, what are the alternatives? “Placebo effect” won’t work if you just tell the patient “we are giving you placebo”.

So the industry still needs to exist, research and marketing still needs to be done and surgeries still need to be performed if “placebo” is more effective than doing nothing at all.

Yes! One of the most relevant and useful projects!

> …universally hated butterfly keyboards.

Not true. I would choose butterfly over a wobbly one (e.g. 2019 Macbook Pro).

> Nobody wants a dongle.

Not true. I do agree that an SD card slot is convenient to have. But I have no significant problems using an adaptor. USB-A feels like a thing from the past to me. So I am not sure I would want it on the laptop.

The HDMI is the only thing I would not mind to retain (because of overscan issues, etc.)

Yes to the physical keys instead of touch bar!

> Fix it.

Where? I’d wanted to repair the most popular electric kick scooter in one of the Northern European countries for couple of years and I couldn’t find any place to do it (I asked all the sellers, sent lots of emails to different web shops, etc.). The economy in prosperous countries appears to be such that repair (especially of less fancy products) is so costly that it makes no sense often or is not possible as in the case described above.

I am seriously thinking why no reputable laptop manufacturer would start a crowd sourcing campaign to make a modern laptop which resembles the 701C as close as possible. I would back it quite likely (depends on the price/performance ratio of course).

Even a more “toy” variant that could be based, e.g. on Raspberry Pi I would likely back if it’s affordable enough.

Another of those subscription apps? That’s ridiculous when people build simple weather, calendar app or a text editor and expect users to pay dozens of euro every year for them.

I am not sure why are they allowing it. Meaning why aren’t services completely isolated? Isn’t it obvious that in an intertwined environment those things are bound to happen (as in “question of when, not if”)? I understand, in smaller companies that are limited in resources (access to good developers and pressure to get product to market as soon as possible) we have single points of failure all over the place. But “the smartest developers on the planet”? What is it if not short-sighted disregard for risk management theories and practices? I mean, Calendar and Youtube, say, should be completely separate services hosted in different places, their teams should not even talk to each other. Yes, they can use same software components, frameworks and technologies. Standardization is very welcome. But decentralization should be an imperative.

Edit: again downvotes started! Thanks to everyone “supporting freedom of expression” :)

I got bullied out of conversation by angry mob (downvoted). But I think, I’ll still provide a clarification. (Fun fact: people in angry mobs are always righteous.)

I was not saying that change is not needed. I am just saying that (total) electricity consumption, say of EU is half of that of US and 1/3 of China. 25% more than India. My electricity consumption is about the same level as of a person in Jamaica or Syria (some years it was less but gone up a bit now). And only 24% percent of my electricity nowadays is fossil (still bad). My newest laptop is from 2015. Many of the people around me are vegetarians or vegans, some people have pretty much given up traveling by plane (* scream emoji *), many use bikes to move around the city.

> Richest. Shmitchest. I happen to think that some of the folks around me are doing pretty good job. Yes, it seems that it may be too late. :( Yes, more needs to be done (likely it will take decades unfortunately)! But “rich” (as you call them) have better opportunities to switch to electric vehicles, adopt energy-saving technologies earlier, and so on.

Too bad EU population is a drop in a sea and it’s already in some parts quite environmentally conscious (if not to say “friendly”).

I would also recommend checking out Testcafe or maybe some other alternatives (I read recently about a project called Playwright which at least “on paper” looks promising). I’ve used Testcafe on couple commercial projects (including one for a large and well known company) and it was a positive experience without any reservations I could remember. Now it still makes me wonder, why do more people seem to prefer a less cross-browser solution that is constrained to one domain(!).

Another take. I think that one of the forces that promote “monopolization” on the internet at least might be the issue of trust. It’s harder to trust “smaller” (or less known) businesses on the internet and vendors on platforms like Ebay, Etsy, Airbnb. Roughly speaking there’s quite a lot of scam and low quality products/services out there. Things work differently offline where physical location can in many situations create more sense of trustworthiness even for smaller businesses. Online – your brand is extremely important. And bigger companies tend to have better established brands.

Just a speculation (and not very related to BD in particular but to a situation where internet got overtaken by corporations instead of becoming that decentralized paradise we once hoped for).

It’s a good question. I am not sure I see a lot of reason to eat it except to support the movement (“create demand”, “vote with my wallet”) and maybe to occasionally blend-in with non-vegans (“Look, I can do the same thing as you without most of the associated problems”). But the latter does not seem that attractive or important to me, to be honest. Now “nutritional” reasons can be: 1) protein, 2) vitamins/minerals. 1st is quite ridiculous. Many plants and vegan foods have so much protein! Even broccoli or green peas. And I am not even starting about tofu, tempeh, etc. So vitamins/minerals is actually a more relevant concern. Now I am not sure if the lab-grown meat is going to have as much of those as farm-grown one. Or still the multi-vitamin pill is a better (and cheaper and more convenient) option?

It’s not obvious for me why wouldn’t they install better cameras. For me camera system is one of the most important parts of a smartphone specification. Don’t those makers realize that there are people for whom those things are important?

One of the amazing games! At some point I really wished there were a remake (that would be as close to the original as possible just with updated graphics, etc.). Though there are games that borrow some of the mechanics I still think MoM had a great balance of playability, depth and atmosphere.

Finally there seems to be more widespread realization that large society-influencing corporations could be intrinsically not-such-a-good thing!

I am surprised why it took school system so long. And despite the apparent collapse of traditional education, it is surprisingly resistant to change. I would also include some works from Demoscene, some newer electronic music (at least from the 80s :)).

That’s a very good point!

Great-great analysis! We need more of those exposing apparent lack of understanding of basic principles of usability by designers of many modern products. My instinct is to tell them, “Read The Design of Everyday Things at least, please!”

“When surveying computing device owners we found that an average abacus user reports 14 problems in the first three months and a laptop user reports 18”.

Why was this downvoted?

I’ve been using Safari for a long time because of its relative resource efficiency and nicer design. But lack of good ad blocking and this annoying glitch in Youtube are the two problems that really make me consider switching to Chromium.

I hope, they’ll fix the annoying problem in Safari that when pausing/unpausing a Youtube video it skips half a second or so of audio.

“A step-by-step guide on how to revert your civilization from color-blind progress-loving one to witch-hunting ideologue-driven bloviating and virtue signaling one”.

Nicely said! I myself prefer the small-businesses’ products. Like several-person organizations that provide “underdo the competition” or “do one thing and do it well” type of software. But I agree on how “bureaucracy” and political games inside larger organizations lead to introduction of not-always-sensical features or re-designs.

One of the most influential and interesting articles to me that I share with all the developers with whom I think I can have an interesting conversation (and it influences some quite a lot)!

I remember there were some comments: > Are you prepared to pay 10x for a text editor, say? My answer: Hell yeah, if I am earning thousands using this editor, why not pay couple hundred bucks for a really well-made program with good support, etc.

But as I understand, there exists no demand for this type of thing among general users. People are ready to pay for tons of useless features being added (just to signal that the project is progressing) but not ready to pay for simpler solutions that are really focused on quality, security and consistent performance.

Great concept but to me does not make that much sense. Because there are no extra keys. So what is the point of having re-programmable keys if you’ll have to reprogram the keys that you are already using? Function keys are not so useful as they are too far away from main typing area (at least for me). An extra vertical row of keys on the left however would be great. I would order such a keyboard. (Currently I am using an International English one and there’s an extra key, § which I re-programmed with different modifiers for several functions. A whole row of extra keys would be just amazing!)

“Fake it till you make it” is precisely how it will be solved

That’s sad! I’ve had an impression for long time that ageism is actually the most prevalent form of discrimination in IT