I’ve ordered various things from AliExpress before, I’ve never had any major issues. One item was DOA, and another never arrived, but In both cases I got refunded quickly and easily.

It seems no worse than any other online marketplace now.

I assume these 3DS units are some sort of refurb. Are they Chinese region units?

I’d say it’s more that parents (companies) should be more responsible about what they tell their kids (customers).

Because right now the companies have a new toy (AI) that they keep telling their customers can make thunder from clapping. But in reality the claps sometimes make thunder but are also likely to make farts. Occasionally some incredibly noxious ones too.

The toy might one day make earth-rumbling thunder reliably, but right now it can’t get close and saying otherwise is what’s irresponsible.

Generally you want to the reference material used to improve that first version to be correct though. Otherwise it’s just swapping one problem for another.

I wouldn’t use a textbook that was 52% incorrect, the same should apply to a chatbot.

As an aside, can we get back into desktop cubes again? With all the upheaval in Windows land it’s the sort of eye candy that can win over new Linux users.

Any distro should be fairly stable and supported on an older Thinkpad.

I’m currently using Debian stable on my X220 and it’s rock solid.

Might be worth looking into LoRa for longer range, it’s got quite cheap to play with now.

I have a ThinkPad X220 that recently turned 13, with SSD and RAM upgrades, basic maintenance, and Linux it’s still running great for plenty of tasks.

Plus it’s so well built I could probably stick it in a plate carrier and use it as body armour. Doesn’t seem to matter how much it gets dropped or dropped onto, ol’ Thinky keeps on chugging.

Using nano as a vim user is a lot less clunky than trying to use vim as a vim non-user though.

Or so I would imagine, all of the vim novices are still too busy trying to exit vim to share their experiences.

What is with Linux projects and confusingly pronounceable names? Even the name “Linux” itself has a fair bit of spoken variation.

Then there’s Ubuntu, and GNOME with the hard G to name a few.

The small phone debate is not just about the overall physical size, it’s also about how reachable UI elements are when using a phone with one hand.

For one handed operation, screen size does matter regardless of bezel size. The larger the screen becomes, the harder it is for the thumb to reach the top of the screen because the top gets ever further away from the thumb.

There’s two main reasons to want a smaller phone. A smaller overall physical size so it fits better in a pocket, or a smaller screen so it’s more reachable when used with one hand.

I suppose the new flip foldable phones might satisfy the first but not the second.

It seems crazy when a list of the 12 best “small” phones have an average screen size above 6 inches.

The iPhone 13 mini has also been discontinued, and the reviewer discourages the iPhone SE 3, describing it the “smartphone equivalent of herpes”. So that removes 2 of the smallest of the “small” phones which makes the situation even worse.

It’s a real step up for managing Home Assistant. I was using it earlier to find some devices to reconfigure and it’s a lot faster. The xtra panels in the UI feel a little cramped on smaller screens though.

I wish they would implement a proper permissions system next, the lack of control is the other admin bugbear of mine with Home Assistant.

I always keep Home Assistant as up to date as possible. Home Assistant keeps improving a lot. Month to month each update goes fairly seamlessly if HA is kept up to date, but the further it falls behind the harder it is to catch back up. Recent optimisation improvements have also made the update process faster.

If you can make the time it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to “start over” somewhat there is probably a lot you have learned since that you can use to improve your setup.

One of my favourite games, it was a very impressive title for the Game Boy at the time. It had an interesting development story, it started as a Game Boy port of Link to the Past, developed in off hours as a sort of passion project.

I remember having to download a text file guide, with dungeon layouts drawn in ASCII art, to get through a couple of the tricky bits.

The Switch port is worth checking out too, the graphical style is adorable.

You will struggle to find anything decent at that price new.

Plenty of good used options though, a used ThinkPad will have great Linux compatibility and be serviceable. They can be very cheap depending on how older hardware you can tolerate. There are other business grade laptops from Dell, HP etc that have good refurb deals too.

Many things didn’t used to be packaged at all, they were sold loose in bulk. The shop would put them in a paper bag at purchase.

I ordered a load of network patch cables recently. They all came packaged individually in sealed plastic bags.

The dangers of Active SETI are based on a lot of human-centric assumptions.

Any hypothetical alien civilisation advanced enough to pose a threat may see our radio broadcasts and space probes as being so crude that they consider us too harmless to bother with.

If there are actively “xenocidal” aliens out there they may also have far more effective ways of detecting their targets.

Yeah, as someone who uses public transport having the noise nuisances get 600% louder really doesn’t sound too great.