Reminds me of old Mercedes and BWMs with built-in NMT phones in their console. The cars lasted a lot longer than the NMT standard for mobile phones.

The Amiga is quite another beast, especially showing photos in HAM mode, giving 4096 colors.

She’s a good writer, I really enjoyed the article. It was one topic regarding being a writer today I was curiously waiting for while reading: gpt. Nothing can be more transforming for writers right now? The erotic novella will probably be written by AI very soon. YouTube is overflowing with AI generated and narrated stories now. Just a couple of months ago they were quite bad, but it’s huge improvements weekly and this week they have become so good that I’ll say they are better than magazine stories. We can just imagine how good they will be in two months from now.

Could AI have written this touching, funny article? There will still be a market for great writers, for now people crave connection to a real person at the other end. In this case, I'm reading it to understand something about being human. But it's true that the market for human writing as a whole will shrink further.

They will never replace lived experience, in the same way McDonalds will never replace a meal made by mom.

Define "replace".

Because for the majority of people, McDonald's and equivalents have absolutely supplanted meals made by a parent or an adult self.

I liked the piece on corruption. You say it’s not everyone, it’s the system. I think it might be the culture, not the system? It has become the culture of the country to think that way. This is something I’m often thinking about, how can this be changed? How can a leader say “we as a country have to change. We need to change our culture, think of corruption as illegal and destructive” , and get the citizens on board with it. Because, with my, unfortunately limited, knowledge about Africa, I have understood that in many countries a government employee can’t make a living of their salary. The position is a position enabling taking bribes, and that’s what’s putting food on the table. When it’s that ingrained, how is a transformation possible? Where to start?

One idea I’ve had, is transformation via a system similar to corruption, but regulated. If you go to a government office, you don’t pay a bribe, but you pay some kind of tip to the representative. And that tip is listed on a “menu” and is reported to the employer, and a small tax is paid. The amounts are set at a level around the commonly known bribe paid today.

Then, year by year, those tips are reduced (or stay the same, not adjusted for inflation), while the salary is increased. This is possible due to the small tip tax.

Doing this while information campaigns are running on TV, internet, schools, and so on, continuously.

Let’s say this is a 20 year project, with a clear goal of a higher level of civilization, imprinting in people that this good and this will make life better for you, your children and grandchildren.

I hope that your country will be able to fix the problem.

Thanks

There’s a new generation that played Minecraft when they where kids, so a new generation of nostalgia ;)

From a PCB layout and supply chain perspective, it’s a big difference.

While the ESP32 is great for many applications, it’s not for battery operated stuff. When an nRF draws 1-2 mA when using BLE, ESP32 will draw 40 mA. And the chip they selected is even more efficient.

The low power chips can also run in low power mode without BLE running using micro amps, something the ESP can’t match.

I really like ESP32 and I hope they have a low power chip on their roadmap.

Sure I agree, but the WiFi functionality is a killer feature. As mentioned in another comment, it means a smart watch stops being a smart phone addition and can actually operate as a stand-alone device.

Years ago I had a "smart" watch that had a sim card and was a full mobile phone within its own right, I think it was just 10 years or so too early.

Concur. With nRF, you have to bolt on a separate 70002 Wi-Fi Chip.

And this chip isn't a normal QSPI chip where you read the datasheet. You have to use NRF connect, and Zephyr.

So, this brings up the obvious question: What if I don't want my whole firmware to be Zephyr nRF-connect, just for a Wi-Fi chip?

Manufacturer lock-in can be quite a problem. I'm not saying the ESP32 solves this fully, but you can mix and match as you like, and it's highly encouraged. I think with the ESP32 most build upon Free RTOS but I'm not aware of a strict requirement.

Of note, you can just pull in a lib to use Wi-Fi and BLE on an ESP32 (C-3 at least). I've done it. It doesn't imply any changes to your firmware architecture. That's the part that bothers me about Nordic's approach.

pretty sure you can use 7002 with any MCUs and vice versa. I dont know what would be the technical limitation

I think that conclusion is wrong, they are absolutely for beginners. No bed leveling. Lidar scan of first layer. Filament sensors. Good software. Enders are sold to beginners but you actually need to be an expert to get good results and keep them running.

This is the obligatory comment on every ray casting game calling itself Doom like. I was scrolling down the page, checking if I had to add it, but luckily it was already done :-D

I have been doing the same since the 90s reading people on usenet calling DOOM raycasting hahaha

The goal for this flight was not to reach orbit, and they said that 30 seconds would be a perfect launch. They managed 20 seconds and say they look at it as a successful first launch.

Now I’m looking forward to watching the next test.