That is also the premise of one of the stories in Asimov’s I, Robot. Human operator did not say the command with enough emphasis, so the robot went did something incredibly stupid.

Those stories did not age well… Or now I guess they did?

What specific version/feature fragmentation and clients are you referring to? As is common now, newer Synapse drops support for older Postgres (for example). Voice and video calls is the only feature that I can think of that is half-assed in Element/ElementX or not implemented in some clients.

Otherwise, Element, Element X, FluffyChat, Fractal, freaking Cinny on Ubuntu Touch (!), and terminal-based gomuks all support basic functionality, DMs, rooms, encryption, and attachments.

You can interact with Matrix server through basic curl commands… and I thought the documentation was pretty good. There are plenty of third-party clients.

Sure, E2EE, keys and cross-signing is not trivial, but I don’t know where it is.

Snikket is the rebranded-dockerized XMPP environment (uses prosody for server, Conversations clone for Android, and Monal clone for iOS).

Worked pretty well for me in the past.

I’ve been hosting a server without much problems for several years now.

Synapse and Riot.im (now Element) became much better around 2019 or 2020. But not too long ago, I also found out that Synapse also bloats the DB with state_groups_state table. There are a handful of commands that come with synapse, but no built-in admin tool or panel, so I wrote my own. Moving server to another host has been seamless for my (few) users. TURN/STUN for calls seems to work okay (I don’t really use it though).

I appreciate Element being uniform across platforms (which I cannot say about XMPP clients), but the sign-in is pretty tedious, and registration with a token is still impossible last time I checked (which is either a hassle for the user to use another client and then their smart device, or a security issue if you open registration to anyone). Most normal people probably don’t care and don’t want to deal with keys, cross-verification, and all that jazz.

The somewhat successful 3D-printing businesses I have read about (reddit, maybe here) are those with a rather specific niche. One that I recall was for reproducing vintage car parts (knobs, levers, decor), modeling, matching color, high resolution prints. Another one, I think, was producing hundreds of very specific part for another company (how they had the connection I do not recall)

I remember the Ukrainian search engine/portal from early 2000s as well.

Thanks Google for now also taking the term “Gemini Space” away from geminispace.

Quite ironic that both the tech giant’s AI and intentionally-simple internet protocol are both named Gemini.

I hate to be that guy, but if FairPhone aims to reduce waste, be modular and repairable, why are there 6 models of them? Are they inter-compatible? What hardware (other than 5G antenna) changed since the first/second one? Even if it did, could it have been replaced (upgraded) on the original model?

Not necessarily a dig at the manufacturers, but I wish collectively we would stop chasing more features / CPU / RAM, stuck with something for a decade, and made existing software more efficient instead.

Late Soviet Union might be a similar to what you are looking for? I wasn’t alive back then, but from what I recall from reading old science magazines as a kid, there were few home computers, lots of “radio-hobbyist” stuff (DIY electronics from radio to computers), and praise for “inventor and rationalizer” for the good of the people. On paper at least. I think most interpersonal communication was over the phone or amateur radio, or even telegrams.

I don’t know much about how modern China goes about it though.

But TBF it’s very difficult to speculate about message encryption. Thinking back from my own experience, digital communication (over the internet or even SMS over cell phone networks) was not common until 90s-2000s, and encrypting them became a concern not too long ago, early 2010s I think? Before that, it was HTTP (without the S) and unencrypted AIM chats over the Jabber protocol.

It’s a Librem5 phone with cringe name and 100% markup, but it’s their own product nonetheless. I.e. it is not a generic Android with a custom skin and preinstalled apps like Trump Phone, Freedom Phone, or Quantum Internet box.

You can buy pretty much the same Librem5 assembled in China for ~$700. Take a look at Liberux Nexx Linux phone too (they are just staring out)

(Not sure what you’re calling racist here, appeal to “patriots”?)

IMO the best on-boarding I have seen in a chat app. Just scan each other’s QR codes or click a link. No account management because ID is unique to each conversation.

Signal and WhatsApp need a phone number, Matrix/Element is needlessly messy, XMPP/Conversations is sensible IIRC (ID + password)

That’s the intent, at least:

Are you intending to ship a (close to) mainline kernel, or a Board Support Package (BSP)/vendor kernel and make it work with a libhybris/Halium approach?

We’ll go with bare-metal Linux—no Halium, no libhybris. We want to stay as close to mainline as possible and actively contribute upstream.

Don’t Equifax, Experian and Transunion already have that?

At least they have enough info about where you lived, what credit cards you had, what loans you had, what vehicles you owned, enough to be used as “verification” to prove your identity.

(I haven’t really used them a lot in the heat yet) Last enclosure was ASA, but AFAIK, black ABS is OK too because black pigment absorbs most of the light/UV, preventing plastic from degrading as fast

For offline navigation on Linux, have you looked at osmin? It was pretty decent on a PinePhone.

How do you handle power-off? Does Raspberry Pi just shut down? My thoughts were to use Alpine or some RAM-based OS that would not corrupt SD card or the hard drive.

I have been messing around with building an in-car navigation from e-waste for a while now. Right now, I settled on an old smartphone with OsmAnd and wrote my own app to view the reverse camera.

Honestly, plain old ignorance. (and some anglo-centrism)

I am a software dev, worked on two translation projects at different points in time, and both of them were kind of a mess. In one case, translation team was all Americans (US company), and I was the only person who spoke another language and had firsthand experience with bad translation in media. When I asked how to switch the language in their app, senior dev told me to switch my OS language. Translations themselves often sounded overly verbose, robotic, or plain weird in other languages.

And then, the typical oversights like not leaving enough screen space for longer translated text, using ambiguous terms without providing context, badly splitting phrases. Text-in-image, etc.

I don’t know much about cars either, but that does happen. For example, Cadillac Escalade was/is based on a less-fancy-looking GMC SUV (Suburban?). Chevy Volt is also Cadillac ELR (different body and interior, same drivetrain), Opel Ampera (in Europe), and Buick Velite (in China, because Buick has a better brand recognition there)

Some cheaper car models come with variety of “sport editions” and out-of-factory tint and spoilers, which would be the equivalent to the RGB computer peripherals that you mentioned, and appeal to specific customers.

TBH I don’t know why some expensive car designs are perceived as “fancy” or “impressive”. I think they are mostly boring. And quality-wise, anything above bottom tier would have materials that last decades now.

Organic Maps / CoMaps is not some corporate platform, you “migrating” to them does not gain them anything. If you have a constructive suggestion, open an issue or contact them.

Interesting, as an ESL speaker of US English (for several decades nonetheless) the timing sounds the reverse for me:

“I thought he died” seems to imply the death was recent, and “I thought he was dead” implies the death happened some time ago.