IMO the “visual concept” is a weak argument - those are very abstract shapes.

each character conveys a word or concept rather than a single letter that has no inherent definition.

And each character consists of strokes, or even unjoined glyphs, making them more eqivalent to a word rather than a letter.

they even have words that are “swapable”

In languages that I know, order of compound words mostly matters but order of words in a sentence can change a lot. In Ukrainian and Russian, it could be used for emphasis without tone, e.g. “она пошла домой” (she went home, neutral), “домой она пошла” (she went home), “пошла она домой” (she walked home). But in English, at least in conversational, non-contorted way, word order has to be preserved.

alphabets (as those are based on sound)

Well, yes, but, actually, no. Alphabets co-evolved with pronunciation. While Ukrainian and Belarusian (AFAIK) are very close phonetically to written text, Russian has a lot of a-o sound swaps, and English, in addition to a = æ and the th sound is… Well, you just have to know how to pronounce every word because they could derive or be borrowed from Spanish or French or any other latin-script language, but for some reason they keep the original spelling.

Lyrics in songs while trying to talk to someone or read something. Have to turn the music down or off. Maybe has to do with English being my second language, but I can process only one stream of audio information at once.

Did not watch the video, but really enjoyed Everyday Utopia - feminist views on labor and family, arguments against current values/ideas of nuclear family, good historical anecdotes, and very little negativity.

Love the simplicity and pragmatism of both protocol and gemtext markup (not so sure on TLS requirements though). I even use gemtext to write pages for my web site / gemini capsule.

Read about it when playing with Gemini (the protocol, not Google garbage), but just like Twitter, did not find a good use for it. Saw maybe one page promoting it.

On a more serious note, Some Assembly Required by Neil Shubin has a lot of fascinating stuff like this about evolution.

Large corporate, some AI tools are available, some are optionally tacked onto PR reviews (Copilot on GitHub). No quotas or enforcement yet. Most vocal proponents of AI happen to be the most obnoxious developers or designers.

Bowerbirds build elaborate color-coordinated displays to attract mates. How the female bird chooses the bower (and mate) is still unclear - it is not simple number or color or shape. So, in our human understanding, bowerbirds have a concept of “art”.

When a Thinkad is disassembled, there are like 20—40 fragile pins on the connector

AFAIK high-resolution screens (laptops, tablets) often use LVDS interface and connector, thin wires in twisted pairs. Like this one

TBH I don’t know that much. If it is a wider ribbon (40-50 pins), it is parallel RGB (5 or 6 bits per color, clock, power, etc). But for 10 pin cable, it probably uses some protocol to communicate.

Since it’s from a vape, it has to be widely available. I would find the model number (even look for similar LCDs on ali or ebay), then find the specs/datasheet/documentation - it should specify which pin is which and what voltages and signals they expect.

Just to add:

Various cheap LCD panels can be repurposed using a $10-20 driver from Ali or eBay.

Red LED 8-segment displays from old alarm clocks - fun to use for any other purpose using a microcontroller.

I think it was an old toaster I got a nice slide variable resistor from.

Precise (but weak) stepper assembly from old CD/DVD drives.

Standard cords from any appliance. Nice high-current switches.

Some old keyboards (especially programmable ones) have a DIP chip, if you are into building keyboards.

Free People’s Village by Sim Kern is on my shelf, haven’t read it yet. The premise is that history went differently in 1990s and US is now a solarpunk utopia… For the rich.

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

Wow. This is literally the argument used by the megacorporation in book The Every (sequel to The Circle). It’s supposed to be social commentary and satire of greenwashing - the megacorporation claims only it is capable of saving the world by being “green” (which includes recycling people’s prized posessions like heirlooms and photographs into bricks for prisons)

That is fair, and I appreciate the explanation.

Edit: Author says GenAI was not used for code, see below.

Original comment, observing signs of GenAI project:

What’s up with these brand-new “Discord alternatives” being cranked out en masse? Would be easier to contribute to XMPP or Matrix IMO.

Initial commit 14,203 files changed +2872320

AI? Or “i worked on this for 10 years and uploaded just now”? /s

Overabundance of emojis in description. Probably AI.

Would be cool to see if anyone manages to get it running.

Were you able to run it yourself? What.

Allegedly, VoLTE works on Ubuntu Touch for OnePlus Nord N100, N10, Volla Phone 22, and Fairphone 4.

Windows Phone was around in mid-2010s, at least 7 years after iPhone release. But it was not hyped enough: companies did not care to develop apps for it, customers didn’t want a smartphone without X Y Z apps (same argument i see now about mobile linux or even custom ROMs). The phones had nice and fast UI though, and some had very good cameras.

Is your iPad on iOS 9.3.5? It is infamously slow.

It is possible to downgrade it to 8.4.1 (faster, partially more broken) or even 6.1.3 (fast and old school, many apps don’t work, but there are apps in Cydia to fix stuff).

Biggest issue I encountered is sites requiring TLSv1.3 for HTTPS encryption, and browsers simply do not support that.

No, never! Tech corps (both devs and app stores) brainwashed people into thinking “no updates = bad”.

Recently, I have seen people complain about lack of updates for: OS for a handheld emulation device (not the emulator, the OS, which does not have any glaring issues), and Gemini protocol browser (gemini protocol is simple and has not changed since 2019 or so).

Maybe these people don’t use the calculator app because arithmetic was not updated in a few thousand years.