Thanks as always for the backlinks Don!
3,320 karma · joined September 9, 2011
https://reddit.com/r/3dprinting_pha is a start.
From a 2018 interview of Brian Acton after he left Facebook ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive... ):
" "An SMS has just come in from his local Honda dealer saying “payment received.” He points to it on his phone.
“This is what I wanted people to do with WhatsApp,” he says of the world’s biggest messaging service, "
- The great brain clearance and dementia debate - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00962-y (2025)
- The Devastating Legacy of Lies in Alzheimer’s Science - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/opinion/alzheimers-fraud-... (2025), referencing the book Doctored https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctored_(book)
- The maddening saga of how an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure for decades - https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarte... (2019, by the late Sharon Begley)
"The way Simon and Grignon saw it, using pure HTML and JavaScript would have a few key advantages. One, it would allow large chunks of functionality to be implemented very quickly because the underlying standards were simple, straightforward, and widely understood. Two, Duarte was intrigued by the notion that his designers would be able to apply their handicraft to apps, screens, and UI elements without extensive assistance from engineers, all of whom had other things to worry about. And perhaps most appealing, WebKit already existed — Palm just had to port it.
Of course, it wasn't that simple. WebKit simply wasn't created for doing this kind of thing. No one working on the core WebKit project had a mobile device with limited RAM, processor, and battery in mind — certainly not for the entire user interface, anyway. Granted, Nokia and Apple had already ported WebKit for use in their mobile browsers at that point, but what Simon and Grignon were spitballing was a considerably more ambitious idea.
One weekend later, though, the two believed they'd cobbled together enough of a mockup to prove that Matias' vision could indeed be realized using nothing more than a web engine. They took the demo to software boss Mitch Allen; Rubinstein saw it not long after. Allen was impressed enough that Grignon was given approval to peel off ten staff members and crank for a month with the goal of bringing up WebKit and basic functionality on a very early prototype handset called "Floyd," essentially a modified Treo 800w"
[...]
"Prototypes of the original Pre first started showing up in Palm offices around April of 2008. Luna was far from perfect, especially running in just the 256 MB of RAM shipped with the original Pre. The system would regularly exhaust the limited space. To help speed things up, the Luna team had decided to port Google's high-performance V8 JavaScript engine, making Palm the first company to ship V8 on mobile"
[...]
"Mercer was shuffled into a new role looking for ways to optimize WebKit, but sources tell us that it quickly became apparent he was only using it to advance his cause: he'd created benchmark tool after benchmark tool showing that the web "wasn't ready for primetime" on mobile. And in a way, he was right — at that time, it wasn't ready for primetime, but Palm's engineers were on the bleeding edge trying to get it there. "It was obvious that this stuff was the future," one senior-level source told us. As the saying goes, they were trying to skate to where they believed the puck was going; Mercer was trying to skate to where it was."
It still feels wild to think of Palm attempting all this while Apple iOS ecosystem developers were generally writing code in Objective-C (Swift came out in 2014).
Another reference I usually bring up is Alan Kay's talk on smalltalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw&t=4m19s
My related comments on this, just to show other stories along this theme:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36885940
In January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order to rename and reorganize it as the United States DOGE Service.
[...]
On March 17 2025, I joined DOGE as a software engineer working for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)."
Some important details that should also be mentioned is that:
- "On February 14, 2025, along with other layoffs across the Federal government, several dozen employees who were part of the United States Digital Service prior to the January 20 inauguration of Donald Trump, were dismissed with an email saying, "Due to the restructuring and changes to USDS's mission, USDS no longer has a need for your services."[30][31][32] Of the remaining 65 employees in the department, 21 resigned with a joint resignation letter on February 25 that stated, "We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services" (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service )
- On March 1st, 2025 - " The former employees of 18F said in a joint statement that they had been abruptly locked out of their computers and email at midnight EST, with "no chance to assist in an orderly transition in our work."[28][29] The 18F website was taken offline the same day." ( from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F#Mass_firings_and_eliminati... )
> Can someone please make a good folding keyboard? This little $18 piece of plastic is decent for what it is, but this was the weakest part of the whole setup, and it feels like it should be the easiest.
There was literally a documentary on Citizen in 2023: https://www.vice.com/en/article/watch-new-documentary-tells-...
So would a cell booster / network extender using eNodeBS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENodeB ) actually help in the scenario in the original article?
Or would it end up as the same issue with wifi calling, where "messages from 5 digit shortcodes often aren't supported over wifi calling" ?
The learning curve is still there, but I felt more empowered to adjust/share 3d printing designs made in it over dealing with quirks of GUI-based CAD applications. The discord community on there is rather helpful too.
https://build123d.readthedocs.io/
https://github.com/bernhard-42/vscode-ocp-cad-viewer
I'll still use FreeCAD on occasion as a secondary viewer for stl files, though my hope is to use build123d entirely including for describing joints as well.
Remember companies like jawbone?
I vaguely remember a cultural stereotype of bmw drivers driving aggressively and wearing Bluetooth headsets. [edit: this is the clip https://youtu.be/UqfAMvXpSw4?t=25 from top gear of jeremy clarkson wearing a bluetooth headset in sunglasses in a bmw, supposedly from topgear season 10, episode 10]
I've found myself using Sidebery and the manual 'unload' tab option quite a bit.
Unless you're living off-grid, I think there's still some benefit to having one of the largest energy loads (building HVAC) coordinate a bit with utilities to ensure there aren't blackouts and such. Even better if there's an approach that works with open-source solutions like Home Assistant.
Where I live staring at the grid load and available energy is a thing during heatwaves and other inclement weather, and the utility generally issues "energy rush hour" limits to smart thermostats to help ensure grid reliability. The utility also incentivizes this I think by providing a small discount on the utility bill.
I'm wondering if an approach to saving older Nest thermostats and reducing ewaste might be:
- Using the older ‘unofficial API’ (from around 2014) assuming it still works, and integrate it with Home Assistant (see GitHub - gboudreau/nest-api: Unofficial Nest Learning Thermostat API ( https://github.com/gboudreau/nest-api ) & GitHub - wiredprairie/unofficial_nodejs_nest ( https://github.com/wiredprairie/unofficial_nodejs_nest#readm... ) )
- Encouraging folks to put older and unsupported Nest devices on a separate wireless network that doesn’t have internet access but access to a Home Assistant server for remote monitoring & control.
- Facilitate a way for Home Assistant based HVAC control setups to work with energy company savings programs where appropriate (in areas of the US this is fairly common, but they may only be supporting major brand vendors so far)
https://emilygorcenski.com/post/on-truth/
""But one of the most significant differences critical for moving from polarization to productivity, is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren’t actually focused on finding the truth. They’re working for something that’s a little more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now. "
Saying this in light of:
- how many satellites are in orbit - this chart showing the change over recent years: https://astrodon.social/@Astromeg/111164811749991554
- this thread a while back speculating about starlink: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1563158073694310401.html
Hasn't been my cup of tea but seems tempting if one has specific ergonomic needs like supine computing. There was one post of someone using them to juggle getting computer work done while handling childcare (endorsing such a thing likely depends a lot on context).
If I recall correctly, the original Pebble had a Compass (which may not have even been used until a OS overhaul later on) but the Pebble 2 SE didn't. (https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/4kz7ch/why_pebble_i...)
"I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization."
The comment further talks about the mute button on the original Amazon Echo (i.e. Alexa voice assistant) being hardware-based : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670