To a lot of laptop manufacturers, it certainly seems that way as of late - that’s why I’m ever hopeful that a modular laptop, such as the framework, might give us the option of how we want to control a mouse cursor.

Fingers crossed for a touchpad with physical buttons.

Can you encourage them to hurry up with a bit of “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa?

“Push it”
“Push it real good”

Awesome. That’s definitely my kind of thing, and I maybe I can nudge a few folks to post some stuff :)

It seems mostly digital/programming/random based stuff from the examples - though by the description above (and wikipaedia’s definition) it sounds like you’d also take more traditional algorithmically generated geometric abstract paintings? i.e. a painting produced following a very strict algorithm/sequence/permutation?

I got detention off of a teacher for saying “Hitler the Shitler” or “Hitler is a Shitler” or something suchlike during a lesson, even though several other kids had already said it and didn’t get in trouble.

Technically, the detention was for swearing, though I chose to interpret it as “Miss Teacher loves Hitler and he is her boyfriend”.

I instigated a petty campaign of cartoons, blackboard messages, textbook graffiti and just general rumours that this poor teacher was genuinely a Hitler-loving-Nazi, and had a Hitler shrine in her house. As I was generally honest, well behaved etc, it was readily believed and spread quickly.

As she was relatively unpopular as a teacher, many of the other students joined in, goosestepping past her in the corridor, nazi saluting behind her back etc.

After a few weeks, upon entering the classroom to find a full blackboard chalk cartoon of her and Hitler getting married, she started crying and shouted at us and we all felt awful.

I apologised to her after the lesson, and she actually apologised for unfairly singling me out for punishment “to set an example” and oddly, we actually got on pretty well after that, and the Hitler jokes faded out naturally.

Great link! I love the little story in there.

I actually use “shevelled” alongside many other words which to my mind “should logically exist” - for example, at the weekend I dismantled and then remantled a wall in my garden.

You can mod almost everything in Dwarf Fortress, down to the shear strength of a single beard hair - but you can’t mod the threading :)

Was one of the records “Largest Dwarf Fortress Fort with a playable frame rate”?

…or they just live with someone who needs to be drinking more water.

If you use the NewPipe android app to watch youtube, you can download directly from there, as video or audio, in a selection of formats.

Though it’s probably technically social media, it’s very different from everything else at the moment (other than perhaps reddit).

I feel this is much more like an old forum. It’s pretty anonymous, you subscribe to things you like and want to hear more about. Comment if you like, lurk otherwise. Nobody’s interleaving my subscribed posts with “suggested” posts and adverts. Mainly, it’s small and probably almost nobody I know in real life uses it.

There’s currently no big corporate users, far-right news channels, “influencers” etc, just nice, safe “Cats, Dad Jokes, Star Trek Memes, Linux News”.

“But Vladimir, you were never going to find any Nazis out there! The Nazis were in you all along!”

There’s a database of Nestle owned companies on f**knestle.art if you want to quickly remove a handful of secretly-Nestle products from your life.

That looks perfect - until I saw it’s £850! My current phone was about £250, which was more expensive than I wanted - but the only one that was small enough and had the dust/water/drop-off-a-ladder resistance.

Still, those S23s may be cheap in a few years when they’re “old” :)

That’s not bad actually, still bigger though - but not by as much as most :)

Sorry, I was unclear. I’ve got a pair of workshoes that fit me perfectly - so I bought 5 pairs exactly the same. When my current pair wears out in a year, I’ll replace it with an identical pair.

It would be tempting to buy 5 copies of my current phone - except by the time this one breaks in 3-4 years, the innards (processor/ram/storage) will be poor in comparison to newer versions, and it may not be able to run newer versions of software.

It is a shame that no company is saying “lets keep it basically the same on the outside, but improve the internal specs” - they tend to do things like making it bigger, removing headphone ports, removing other physical buttons, or making it thinner but giving it a rubbish battery that’s nonreplaceable.

I used Thinkpad as a comparison, as you can still buy an older model of Thinkpad and pack it with newer innards - so buy the older model with the case you like, but refurbished with more ram, a better processor etc.

If you put my 2 year old Thinkpad laptop next to my old one, they look pretty much the same, except the new one is thinner and much lighter - they still both have physical touchpad buttons, the trackpoint, lots of ports down both sides. I can still use my older laptop bag, because they’re nominally the same size and shape.

I wish some phone models followed a similar process - “here’s the same thing you already have, but better”.

I would absolutely love a barebones, tiny, configurable Raspberry Pi of phones.

If it were shoes I’d say “just get ten sets of what’s the right size”, but the problem with tech is we’re still going to want more ram, more storage etc.

Like who is going to keep all the buttons, ports, dimensions and connectivity, whilst upgrading the innards?

Like a Thinkpad of phones?

My phone is about 15cm (~5¾ in) tall, and to me, that’s the absolute maximum. It’s slightly too big. The width, about 7cm (~2¾ in) is totally fine.

This (Galaxy XCover 5) was the smallest phone that seemed to exist (and I wanted one woth durability, removable battery, SD slot, headphones etc). It was very expensive though.

Trying to find cheaper ones for various people in the extended family, they all specified “oh, not bigger than my current one”, but it was impossible. There’s basically nothing less than 16cm tall, and most are even bigger.

I’m scared of this one breaking. The XCover 6 is 17cm x 8cm.

I get what you mean, like there’s definitely some stuff you can just look at a picture of it on the internet, but I guess for others it’s about the sense of space, connection, grouping, narrative, context etc that’s present with a well put together Museum or Gallery display.

Without all that, you’ve just got a car boot sale of random things - wheras the text, maps, illustrations, audio, video or 3d recreations etc that sits alongside - or simply the placement of things next to one another, or following through the room in a particular order is what really makes that stuff interesting.