mcphage

I feel like you could solve that with some constraints defined early in the process—the controls must fit in dimensions XxYxZ, and have K-input wires, and draw at most 5V of power, or whatever. Then the control designer can go off and design whatever they want within those constraints, and the car designer can go off and design the interior of the car knowing what the head unit will require.

Several places on that page link to "the napkin", which starts:

> If you are reading this, you have probably discovered a capsule from the early 21st century - a long list of numbers, maybe etched onto a titanium cylinder.

That supposition seems woefully incorrect.

The thing about the TI powerbook was, it didn't have to be plugged in to hot swap the battery. You could do it when running on battery power. (It had a tiny internal battery, that could run it for like 20-30 seconds, so long as the screen was closed).

It did also run when plugged in with the battery removed, which is good 'cause the battery eventually failed. So this way I can still run it.

> The fact that you "do not miss" a better world, does not mean it is not better.

In the abstract, yeah, it's better. But the extra battery cost me a lot of money, and I did not feel it was money well spent.

> Amazes me they don't just sell it like that everywhere because it sounds a lot like a product improvement...

I'm not so sure. The first laptop I bought, a Titanium Powerbook, had replaceable batteries. And even better than that: you could hot-swap them while the laptop was running on battery power, and the laptop wouldn't even shut off. It felt leagues ahead of even modern replaceable battery functionality, and honestly? After owning that laptop for years, I felt like I just wasted my money with that additional battery.

Part of it, I'm sure, was that I didn't have an external charger to charge the battery not currently in the laptop. But on the whole, it just didn't feel like it was actually worthwhile, and when Apple stopped shipping replaceable batteries, I've never missed it.

(Hot swapping the batteries really was awesome, though)

> You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money.

I think the article was very clear that they had already accepted that, and had already decided it was worth never getting their money.

> a bat (if you're fit)

Or if it has rabies.

This is from 2017. Which isn’t to say it’s not real, because I’m sure you could, but it hasn’t really manifested as a civilian problem.

Um, has the author not been paying attention to what's going on with traditional media?

> the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions.

But very difficult to have those conversations.

> only ever to be fulfilled if you happen to get another lead on a cheap supply of that same part

I've also heard that's how McDonalds does McRib sandwiches—they only offer it when pork futures are cheap enough.

Stockholders seem concerned that Nintendo isn't throwing away enough of their seed corn, like all the other major game publishers are.

> Off topic: what are you enjoying lately?

I've poured tons of hours into Blue Prince, which is a great puzzle game. Pokopia is fun and charming if you like Pokemon or Minecraft. I've recently been playing Öoo which is a short but sweet "metroidbrania". I played through both Strange Horticulture and Strange Antiquities recently, and liked them both. I played the demo of "Adventure of Elliot: Millennium Tales", and liked the gameplay enough I'll probably pick up the full game, even though the dialog is atrocious. (The voice acting is good, at least).

> when people start to scream it's not fair

Or LLMs, as we have seen.

> To the outside world, however, not much other than theatrics, has changed.

On the inside, it’s very different.

It's hard to feel proud of your country while it's being robbed blind and burned to the ground by a collection of cartoon villains. And knowing that a large chunk of the country either chose this deliberately, or ignored everyone else who told them what they were choosing.

Yeah, it seems strange to get this "working", because fundamentally there is no correct answer. Our calendar isn't well defined in any consistent fashion back to then.

I don’t mind Apple’s walled garden in the abstract, but the fact is they’ve been a terrible steward of their App Store. If you search for an app to do something small but useful, instead you’re presented with an ocean of identical apps that all have $10 a week subscription fees. The golden age of “hey I’ll just go on the App Store and buy something handy for $3” has long past, and a lot of those few-dollar apps have switched to a subscription plan anyway, meaning the money you spent was thrown away.

The ol' Q-tip defense.

Locomotive, by the similarly named Brian Floca, is also a masterpiece of detail and charm.

> AI or human, does it really matter?

Yeah, it really does.

> multiple people can scan a QR code simultaneously

If it's large enough, and posted in a place where people sitting around a table can all see it clearly.

> Switch 2 went further and had games that shipped as a pure license key with no data storage.

Those at least are able to be resold, which is a large step above a one-time-use license key.

Yeah, that’s definitely true. But the world is filled with sinners.

> was involved in evidence tampering in a case that involved the shooting of a police officer

Did the zines shoot the police officer? Or was the police officer shot with the zines?

> I'd quickly realised that a set of words which covered most of the alphabet (20 words, leaving b, g, j, q, v, and z excluded) allowed solving virtually all Wordle puzzles. The game quickly lost any challenge.

You can even go further—there's a set of 5 words which uses 25 out of 26 possible letters, leaving you one more word to enter the right answer.

But here's the thing: while that means you'll almost always win, your # of guesses will always be high.

> but if your goal is simply to solve (rather than minimise attempts)

Pretty much nobody's goal is to simply solve. Once they've played it for a few days, everybody's goal is to minimize guesses. That's the flaw in having a long word list—you always do badly.

It’s not exactly a… subtle point, it’s making.

That a significant cause of death in the UK, then?

> If America had instead been grown by importing people from India or Africa, the American Empire would not exist.

Oh man, wait until you learn about American history and where we imported people from—it is going to blow your mind.

> It is not going to build you an empire today.

Maybe, but lack of it will definitely lose you one.