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Brilliant for folks in flat cities riding to and from work. That's the environment in which they got popular 100y ago. For hills def need rim brakes or discs for flexibility of use. BMX racing in early 80s we used the lightest rim brakes and levers we could find. I had couple of times snapping the levers and even the brake arms before fitting with really strong machined aluminium ones which lasted me 3 years before I stopped riding.

Glorious word to describe just about every iOS update ever.

Beautiful and warmth-filled tribute to Elise . Gorgeous piece of writing reflecting his sense of joy, love and loss. A life well lived.

All this ranting about COBOL. Makes me fairly sure AI hasn't tackled RPG3 yet :-D

This is brilliant.

Can Dang implement a slop rating on submitted pages? Not a block but at least a % likelihood of AI slop content and that could also be tied with a BS rating as well.

Could use AI for both which seems hilariously appropriate.

Amazing and eye opening list of discoveries made by folk in the realm of modern day China. I was clued on to this by my 6yo getting homework question about "how is he inspired by Li Shanlan". I had not heard of this person but diving into his history and finding about a 9 Arts of Mathematica written 2000 years ago and then happening on this list on Wikipedia. I am stunned.

Makes me wonder how many other amazing discoveries and thinking remains to be known globally and is just hidden due to culture, language, politics or repression. The libraries of Africa, scrolls of Tibet and Burma, and on and on.

Reminds me a lot of my old Nokia 525 with windows. Great form factor for running and hiking. If this one got GPS I would buy it. But it's up against excellent full function phones like bluebox and veelo from China which make stunningly good small phones.

I really like the thinking of openness behind this device. Could be great as a pocketable "notice board" getting info on a schedule from mobile and "posting" to a pub on device for me to look at when I feel like it and react to messages on my schedule.

Great for kids to get started. Saves to SD so you don't fill your mobile storage with 12,000 beach photos from last holiday. Cheaper to lose/replace than ifone.

I still have a LUMIX camera 10+ years for instant pics when travelling. Smaller than my wallet.

Mojo not good enough?

So now the speculation can start as to which company they will acquire first.

100% agree with this. The whole "influencer" industry (let's be honest it's about manipulating you) is peak enshitification.

I quit twitter cos it became a cesspool. IG needs aggressive curation and keeping notifications off. Even bluesky became rage bait. And only watch a few channels of YouTube thru FreeTube.

Maybe I just old grumpy geek but after nearly 2 decades of social media I've yet to find the "social" part. It is in the main a bucket into which anyone can vomit their media and hysteria du jour.

It was a good experiment but it's done.

Pieces has promise if they can come up with a curation process that matches the ideals of their platform. I truly hope it works out because part of me wants there to be a place online for people to share publicly without fear of doxing or advertising.

We could remove 100% of world AI supply and humanity would not be worse off. It is still additive and in areas of generally indeterminate value except in hype.

Reasoning and RAG is amazing already and is a productivity gain but I'm yet to be convinced GenAI is anything but a slop machine.

#startflamingmenow

Love it !

Straight out of China playbook. Every SIM must be registered with government issued/recognised ID. Yes combats fraud. Yes means govt can track you thru IMEI 24x7 anywhere in the world.

This is gorgeous. Makes me feel like I'm picking up an old news sheet. Forces me to read slowly from which I then enjoy the reading much more it's like difference of drinking a fine wine from a glass instead of a straw in the wine bottle.

Kudos to the author.

Agree. Should be legally required for all web hosted pictures to be AI poisoned except with explicit verifiable opt out. Same for text.

Needs some institution with many geek supporters and or large tools, like Wikipedia or EFF to wage a campaign of scanning the web for materials used without permission and then loading the courts with cases of probable non-consensual usage. May not change billionaire behaviour but perhaps will change consumer behaviour.

Retirement is an artificial modern construct to create jobs. People are supposed to be active until they die. Hobbies are just a replacement activity. I have no intention of retiring (over 60 already). I work in tech and learning new skills and my income feeds and houses my family and pays for my running shoes.

As other commenters have noted folk in some places don't have anything but work. That is a global social issue that needs addressing first.

The issue is chip production in Korea and possibly Taiwan. And that's where vast amounts of US chip inventory comes from. How to buildout AI capacity if can't source memory chips? This exposes another risk to the high AI valuations which are underpinning market valuations.

The article is timely as it suggests yet another unconsidered risk factor of this war - USA could destroy its own stock market. Or Iran could accelerate that with one missile. I like to think the US military know this hence obsession with missile destruction but it is reasonable based on recent behaviour to assume that the MAGA overlords can't even spell bromine nevermind understand the risk.

FWIW my Dad taught me how to type at 4yo on a huge Imperial typewriter. My spelling took an enormous leap in capability in a few weeks. Primary school teachers were amazed at the words I could spell correctly. (Didn't help my handwriting though which was still like intoxicated chicken scratch on a good day).

When I did tertiary studies in programming there wasn't AI but we did our programming exams in pencil and paper. The "beneficial" prep we had and I had since high school was using punch cards. And 24h turnaround time for compiles. That really makes you think. And you learn how to desk check even thousand line programs. Intense focus, structuring for readability (to catch typos) and simplicity (catch logic errors) helped enormously. Was not unusual to change hundred lines of code and submit knowing that it wouldn't compile but will throw up the other errors I couldn't find. Our exams would give us 4-6 attempts for clean compile AND correct output. The only space where I experience same challenge now (40+ yrs later) is embedded code. Desktops and web stuff have LSPs and dynamic reloads and interpreted code (not a thing for me when learning) with instant feedback.

Lots of skills from those old days that have been lost/ignored in the pretence of productivity.

I'm waiting for the man to make a laptop case out of concrete. That will be truly brutalist!

That's the one I've been using for a while. Nice to have something so clean in this age of slop.

Brilliant in every possible way. Fortran was first language I learnt at high school in its "PORTRAN" variant.

As Someone who has spent decades working with teams around the world with varying levels of English from native to none, these are good guidelines. I would add to try and talk using the simplest and least ambiguous words you can. Breathe. And use shorter sentences.

I also have non English speaking family members so I get to improve everyday. And yes I make mistakes every day but 99% avoidable and the rest I just accept and move on. Multicultural and multilingual teams are a joy not a test so enjoy them when you have the chance. Might surprise yourself how much you will learn about people and communications and build a new level of self awareness in the process.

My 2c.

If you self assemble take great care with the buttons! Otherwise a great reliable device. Bought myself one as "reward". But broke the left lower push button. On board contact still works so it's usable. ESP so comes with wifi&BT goodness built in.

Second that. Have had one for 2 years and it's brilliant. Haven't yet tried to build any app for it. But it runs a month for me on single charge. I use it for travel or when out for day trips with family.

This is wonderful news. As a "mail carrier" for US govt they should be made a branch of Post Service and then under Trump benevolent guidance and DOGE goals the department can be cut down to 3 people and a laptop. Billions in Gov subsidies saved right there. Done. Make it so.

They have. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/china-showcases-new-mo...