That was a nod to Great Moments in Unintended Consequences. (Example)

For me it’s branding something as “AI” as a buzzword. Almost all product marketing is full of AI hype these days.

The Year: 2092

The Problem: Timezones are annoying

The Solution: Space mirrors! A series of mirrors in space would rotate to keep the entire planet under a single time zone. A perfect global time system is born!

Sounds like a great idea! With the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

Any front engine rear drive car going in reverse, lol.

There is always the Wikipedia style link to the definition whenever such word arrives. This is what browser tabs are for.

I like being able to rotate 90° one of my screen because sometimes it’s just the best way to work.

PL setups are the best.

If that ever happens, I would start bringing duct tape to flights, tape a magazine to cover the screen.

I remember having a conversation with a former friend a while ago, and he, as a guy who worked for a certain company that makes most of its revenue from delivering ads, spoke about requiring use of front facing camera and using eye tracking technology to ensure you’re actually watching the ads and not going somewhere else while the ads play. If you aren’t looking at the ad, it will play another ad afterwards.

He spoke about it as something he is looking forward to, since it would increase revenue. Pretty sure he was pitching this idea to his boss hoping to get a promotion.

If these are signs of being old, I was born old.

They did win because of how the electoral college works. Both Trump and Bush lost the popular vote and won the election because the system is designed in a stupid way.

Your phone’s email app is a client, but I digress… I hate using the browser to access emails. I use many different email accounts with multiple email providers to compartmentalize my emails and avoid spam. I used Thunderbird for years before switching to Geary and now back to Thunderbird.

My first time trying to get my mother to switch from Windows to a Linux based OS wasn’t successful because there was too much friction and inconvenience for her, and she wasn’t willing to even entertain the idea of Linux for years after that. My second attempt was successful because Linux is much more user friendly than it used to be 13 years ago, and I changed my approach to make it as frictionless as possible.

Firefox just set to block 3rd party cookies + some basic extensions like adblocking and some easy privacy stuff is a good way to go about it, because it’s better than what she used previously and it doesn’t become inconvenient to her. She doesn’t know what an operating system is, or what cookies are… She just uses the computer to browse the web, emails, and light office work. She even says she prefers the current setup (though that’s because her old computer was chugging with Windows and runs smoothly now with a less bloated OS)

No need for noscript, deleting cookies, fingerprinting, or user agent stuff… Only introduce these to them if they express interest in privacy and are interested in learning more. If you try to thrust it upon them too suddenly they will just think “Linux isn’t a good user experience and is only good for tech enthusiasts and programmers”.

At least 60% of my internet time is YouTube. I rely on it for entertainment, news, education, discovering music, technical help, ETC…

Could I live a meaningful life without it? Probably, people have been living meaningful lives before the invention of the computer in general… But I wouldn’t give it up because there is an immense amount of incredible content there that genuinely makes my life better.

I think it depends on how good your sense of smell is. Mine is really bad, so if I had my eyes covered and was wearing noise cancelling headphones, I wouldn’t be able to tell if there are people in my area unless they haven’t showered in a while… Being able to distinguish between people? I can’t even differentiate between the smells of popcorn and peanut butter.

On the other hand, I know someone who was able to smell a “coppery” smell on someone which no one else notice. Eventually she convinced him to see a doctor and they found a rare condition that I can’t remember which.

I never understood why people care so much for wireless charging. It’s less efficient, therefore you heat your device more which shortens the longevity of the battery, you charge slower, and if you move the device slightly, it won’t charge, therefore it’s less reliable (unless there is a magnet array like apple). Sure, it’s useful in a pinch, but is it really a make or break feature?

The smartphone market has matured, so there is less of a difference between each generation. Earlier on there was a massive difference in performance:

The OG Galaxy S had 512MB of RAM, 8GB storage, and a single Arm A8 core at 1GHz, and the SII had 1GB of RAM, 16GB/32GB storage, and a dual core A9 at 1.2GHz. This is a single generation with double the RAM and more than double CPU power, and nearly 6x the GPU power (theoretically), and 2-4 times the storage.

Then the SIII came out with a quad core SoC 1.4GHz, a much larger screen with higher resolution (jumping from 480p to 720p), significantly bigger battery, and up to 64GB of storage.

The S4 doubled the RAM to 2GB, faster storage, significantly faster and more efficient SoC, a larger, 1080p display paired with a much more powerful GPU, and a significantly larger battery as well.

Back then, if you had the money, there was a considerable difference between each generation and there was a reason to upgrade, many not every year, but if you could afford it, upgrading every other year made sense.

After that, changes were much more calm. Sure, some phone makers made exciting and innovative stuff, but the hardware didn’t have a massive difference from one generation to another, and also prices were rising.

Nowadays, phones are far less exciting, but flagship phones are ludicrously expensive, and yet they sell incredibly well. While phones are being improved from one generation to the next, they feel like small steps rather than a giant leap. Our demand for power hasn’t gone up quite as fast as our phones themselves. People will keep buying phones less frequently, just like we do for laptops.

Flipping an individual bit through radiation is extremely easy, which is why we need error corrections, but despite that, we still get errors… Even if the probability of an error bypassing the ECC is extremely low, over a long enough timescale it will happen often enough to evolve. Especially in space where there is no atmosphere or magnetic field to reduce it.

When you forget to put break conditions for a loop…

You can easily pull the bones out and eat it without touching the wing with your fingers. It’s only hard to do when you have overcooked chicken. I always assumed these people never had proper wings before.

Probably people who think it’s about 15 minutes of driving, because they can’t consider the possibility of walking for 15 minutes.