But that's fine. I would prefer having the specs - that helps a lot in writing high quality drivers.
That said, open source relied a lot on reverse-engineering in the past - not to mention that reverse-engineering is much easier these days.
But not being able to e.g. merge a driver into the Linux Kernel because of a software patent is an actual, real blocker. Same thing with patent-encumbered codecs.
Patents was supposed to be a tool to enable competition, but does the reverse now - and it is holding as back as society. We should move away from it. Especially and specifically when it comes to vague, loose ideas just like the GP post says here.
For me, long-press is one of the most infuriating UX features of mobile.
Probably the top on the offenders list for me is the copy-paste with the handles (which of course relies on long-press to trigger).
Hard buttons beat soft buttons for UX any time. You can use them with a glove, you can feel where the are located and you don't accidentally click because your finger was close enough for the capacitive touch sensor to trigger.
God, I hate copy/paste on android. tbh, I hate the whole 'gestures' thing where there never seems to be an actual 'instruction sheet' of what gestures are available. I wish they would make new apps provide a 'manifest' of gestures they support so your phone could have an up to date list based on which apps you have installed.
Worse, when I try to select text from whatever note with important data I have, the first option is "Cut", which means losing data (i.e., data is deleted from the source). "Copy" is hidden behind a hamburger menu. Who was the stupid person at Google who thought this would be good UX??
I’ve replaced the android headunit with a buttons and segmented display one (kenwood) because it was just horrendous. Now, it’s easy to switch sources, skip back and forth, and adjust volume with minimal looking. Tactical feedback and location memory is great UX.
There are some routers with OEM fork of OpenWRT that allow you to flash stock openwrt without any obstacles and by easily dropping the image blob in the web UI - just easy as upgrading the firmware from stock openwrt.
Granted, not exactly what you wished for, but pretty close.
I use a GL.inet travel router and their UI on top of OpenWRT is actually pretty good and makes connecting to strange hotel and other captive portal networks pretty straightforward. Luci is still available, or SSH.
The OpenWRT version is relatively old, and unfortunately the latest firmware requires reconfiguring family permissions, but I’ve otherwise been happy with the device. I use it for all kind of strange things (ad-hoc extending my home network for getting my solar inverter back online, tethering to my phone, etc.), but primarily use it to make it easy to get my family’s devices online while traveling (6 iPads, 3 phones, and a laptop).
Good move! I was there before, and the worst part was... I was using a @gmail.com address. Bad mistake on my part. So actually tracking what I used the address with, that was my real pain. Now everything is on my custom domain, so if I need to move on from my current provider, it will be painless. In the process I did manage to delete a whole bunch of accounts I didn't use anymore.
Incidentally, I also moved to fastmail, and it is just boringly fantastic. It works. It has features I actually need and enjoy (masked emails!) and I recommend it to anyone who asks.
I had it read all of the emails find which accounts were associated with the old email and then go switch them to the new email. I only had to manually intervene for 2 accounts out of 36ish.
Lemonade-server works pretty well (most of the time). It wraps llama.cpp and other runtimes - it downloads the official binaries as far as I could see, and you can set alternative versions if needed. Works nicely with Strix Halo for a while now.
Patents was supposed to be a tool to enable competition, but does the reverse now - and it is holding as back as society. We should move away from it. Especially and specifically when it comes to vague, loose ideas just like the GP post says here.
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