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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 11th, 2024

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  • 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.


  • Finishing the Imperial Radch sci-fi trilogy (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) by Ann Leckie. Despite the agender language feature (everyone is addressed as she) the books deal more with colonialism, imperialism, and personal identity, rather than gender. Writing style is very information-dense, lots of thoughts and actions happening simultaneously. Compared to other science fiction that I read, it gets much more into the cultural and interpersonal situations, especially the second book.



  • Another interesting exploration is in Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter. New technology allows creating light-passing micro-wormholes at any location (and time!), erasing privacy nearly entirely. At first, tabloids run wild with “shocking” photos of famous people, but eventually the hype dies. There are people who outright do lewd things in public (“anyone can see me at any time anyway”), some go about their life as usual, and some join secret groups who meet in the dark and use touch language for the deaf-blind.




  • 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 see Microsoft Dynamics 365 and would like to introduce you its little brother: Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The language is C/AL, offshoot of Pascal, code editor does not support multi-line selection (let alone any features like highlighting or navigation), and source code control is managed by locking files.








  • When I read books, picturing everything in my head is a part of the enjoyment. Often, books describe senses and feelings that would be more difficult to portray in images or video. Some examples:

    Right now, I am reading Ancillary Justice (by Ann Leckie), and the main character (who is the narrator) has difficulty with recognizing gender, so, unless explicitly stated, it is up to me to decide how characters look. Also, main character controls multiple bodies at once, and some paragraphs are full of parallel events and thoughts.

    Annihilation (by Jeff Vandermeer) has a movie adaptation, but it’s different from the book. The book goes deeper into the main characters own thoughts, concerns and regrets. It also describes smells and physical senses quite often, and the creature the main character encounters evokes emotions more so than just a description. And throughout the story, in addition to the general eeriness of Area X, there is just a feeling of being lost. (I should give credit that It Follows does the uneasy feeling really well, too)

    And just to be annoying, I can extrapolate your logic to “video does not show what happens around the camera, VR is better”, and “VR does not bring the senses of touch, smell, and heat, fully immersive simulators are better” :)




  • I was always under the impression that the fraudulent intent (outside of extremly blatant cases) would be very difficult to prove in court or otherwise. If a car is used to meet clients or haul some company-related cargo, it is used for business. If a company is a real estate developer, it is expected for them to own and lease residential properties. If the owners’ family members work for the company, they must collect salary. And so on.