Another fun fact: official German spelling later changed “thal” to “tal” (both pronounced as a hard “t”), so now the valley is Neandertal, not “Neanderthal”

The slowness was not a tax on the real work; the slowness was the real work. It was how the work got good, and how the people producing the work got good

This line reminded me of a couple of articles, linked below, that I read on AI use in astrophysics. Developing junior researchers is a big part of the point of their work, so they really are going to have to limit their AI use to make sure development happens. But worry that industry won’t care; they’ve been hollowing out junior positions for years, because there’s no value in training a senior who is just going to jump ship to a company that doesn’t train juniors. That’s an existing problem, but AI seems likely to make it worse.

• The machines are fine. I’m worried about us. by Minas Karamanis
• Find the stable and pull out the bolt by Natalie B. Hogg

And that’s only, like, the most basic part of an industrial e-stop. On top of directly disconnecting the energy source, it also has to include redundant circuits (since it’s possible for a contactor to break and fail open, or weld and fail closed), and some even need to have signal pulses constantly going through them to actively confirm they haven’t been pressed. They absolutely should not just send a signal to a Linux computer, because general-purpose operating systems are too complex to be rated for safety.

This isn’t even my area of expertise yet I know this stuff. The fact that they failed at the very first requirement is really messed up.

Even if you press that big red emergency stop button on the mower itself, a hacker can send another command to unlock it, Makris says.

Holy cow. I work in factories, and I know enough about industrial safety to know that would not fly.

I liked Buckminster Fuller and family’s use of “sunsight” and “sunclipse”. The way we talk about things affects the way we think about them, but pedantry is just annoying, so try on some neologisms instead.

My main use is as an SSH client. My next most common use is pass (with the password store synchronized via a Syncthing app, outside of termux). And one more I enjoy is pdftk for basic PDF editing operations (e.g. split, merge, remove passwords); that’s been useful at work where it seems like no one’s got PDF editors installed on their computers already.

I host a CalDAV server (specifically Nextcloud’s Calendar app, though plenty of others exist, like Radicale) and all my devices sync with it.

Maximum 4296 alphanumeric characters, but that’s with the largest-sized code and low/no error correction (so not always practical).

Where is “here” for you? I’ve never heard of a place with variable speed limits.

Actually, it’s more the opposite. Sorry, I don’t think I explained too well. The watch works just fine on its own without a smartphone. For functions that require phone and watch working together, Gadgetbridge lets them communicate (e.g. when you receive a text message on your phone, Gadgetbridge will let you read the text on your watch).

The apps on the watch will work with or without a smartphone. However, installing apps from the Bangle app loader requires the watch have a Bluetooth connection to a phone or computer. After apps are installed, they will run even without the Bluetooth connection.

Finally, note that the Bangle does not have an internet connection on its own; it has no cellular or wi-fi radios on board. So any apps that require a network connection (e.g. weather) will only work when paired to a phone with Gadgetbridge. I think there are other watches with wi-fi, but I’m not familiar with them.

I have been using a BangleJS 2 for the last year, and have quite liked it. There is a companion app, Gadgetbridge, to install on your phone, which is available through F-Droid (there is a Bangle-specific version of it, or a generic version that supports a bunch of other smart watches). There is also an app store (all free software) for apps that run on the Bangle itself. It includes a heart monitor, but no music streaming.

I’ve also been watching rePebble as they start making new Pebble smartwatches. I’ve never owned one, but a lot of people swear by them. They are now fully open source and have an app store. No idea if they can stream music.

I believe that’s pretty much what happened after the dot-com crash. A lot of fiber was laid during the bubble, it went dormant after the crash, but it was useful afterward as the internet continued growing.

Yeah, this one’s completely different from the one I remember. I found this blogspam around a greentext that matches my memory.

That sounds like an issue with the underlying OpenStreetMap data that is used by Organic Maps (and CoMaps, and OsmAnd, and others). Map quality depends on where you are in the world and who is contributing to the maps there. If data is incomplete around you, you could contribute to it (but easier said than done, I know).

I can’t say why the route would be hours longer than Google maps, but I’ve noticed OsmAnd~ tends to overestimate drive time for me (I think it overestimates delay from traffic lights). Or it could just be that calculating routes on your phone doesn’t always give results as good as calculating routes on Google’s servers.

Automatics also allow for engine braking. From a quick search, it sounds like a toss-up as to whether that triggers brake lights. Regardless, the article mentions the benefit is not only from cars slowing down, but also from indicating that a car is preparing to stop or “that a stationary vehicle might initiate movement”. Neither of those can be done by an engine brake, so front brake lights would still have a benefit even with a driver that likes engine braking.

Oddly enough, that convention isn’t universal. Top-to-bottom is typical in the US, UK, and Commonwealth, while bottom-to-top is common in continental Europe and non-anglophone Americas.

You can only pardon someone who was convicted of a crime.

I don’t believe that’s true. See the pardon of Richard Nixon, who was never even impeached, let alone charged. I believe there’s some debate on the validity of such a pardon, but none (including Nixon’s pardon) have been challenged in court.

Excuse me, that was Finn’s right arm.

The comic was released the day after the election, by an author who lives in the United States. I suspect the comic is explicitly about American politics.

It sure feels like we’re at the peak of the Gartner hype cycle. If so, the bubble will pop, and we’ll end up with AI used where it actually works, not shoved into everything. In the long run, that pop could be a small blip in overall development, like the dot-com bust was to the growth of the internet, but it’s difficult to predict that while still in the middle of the hype cycle.