• 2 Posts
  • 13 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Unfortunately I already read the headline, is there anywhere I can offload this now unnecessary excitement?

    Python in Excel would be great, but nerfing it with some ridiculous cloud dependency is crazy. They could still paywall the feature if they really wanted while still running the Python interpretation locally.

    I suppose we should be grateful they hadn’t also stuck ChatGPT on to it too so it could (badly) write the Python for you. Tech by buzzword will be the death of us I’m sure.







  • Successfully monetising a platform means doing it in harmony with the the user base though, at least to some degree. A platform can’t make money from users if it scares them all away. Social media platforms are especially vulnerable too because they rely on users to create their content. Nobody comes to Twitter to marvel at the system infrastructure, they come to read tweets.

    The way certain tech companies are behaving currently is too knee-jerk and heavy handed. They are panicking and damaging their platforms in the process.


  • The internet used to be more decentralised. There were lots of smaller websites, blogs, forums etc, which people discovered via word of mouth, search engines, and forgotten things like webrings. It’s only recently that big monolithic social media platforms took hold.

    Tech is often cyclical, we could now be swinging back to a more decentralised web, but with the benefit of newer technologies. Right now it’s almost a new “wild west” as new platforms appear and new ideas like federation are experimented with. Some will rise, some will fall, some will go off in the corner and do their own thing. While all that happens it’s going to be a bit messy, much like it was in the 90s with the initial rise of the web.




  • My Steam Deck experience has been very positive, it’s a great way to play games away from the desk. For me the controls are great, and game compatibility continues to surprise me.

    I would say the only problem with the Deck is the size - it’s big. When I got mine it seemed a lot bigger than I realised, and that was after watching/reading a lot of reviews. Depending on your hands the size might be an issue. If you know anyone else with a Steam Deck I would recommend trying it out for size before buying.




  • I prefer non swappable phone batteries. If I need to charge my phone while out I use USB power bank, which is infinitely more useful than a naked phone battery that can only be used in the phone. Non swappable batteries also allow for phone casing to be much more resilient to impacts and the elements, and can help reduce the phones size.

    A phone battery is not to going to reach end of life for 2-3 years in normal use, so it doesn’t seem too much of hardship to get the toolbox out or go to a service centre when it does eventually need replacing.

    Maybe require manufactures to not use such incredibly strong glues that some use to secure the batteries, but mandating they be swappable seems the wrong approach to me.


  • It’s annoying fragmentation when even for a stable distributable package there’s flatpak as a standard, and I’ve never seen why Ubuntu needs their own with a proprietary store.

    It’s the Canonical way, just as with Mir, Upstart, Unity, and a bunch of other NIH Canonical projects.

    I miss the old Ubuntu sometimes, the Ubuntu that wanted to be an up to date Debian with sensible defaults, easy installation, and commercial support. It seems that wasn’t profitable or visionary enough for somebody though, and we’ve ended up here instead.