That's why now we need gigabytes of ram to do the same thing we managed in 128Mb back then. I mean sure, there's an AI chatbot in your PDF viewer and ads in your start menu, but the functionality of many daily things is still the same.
"back in the day" we had waterproof phones with user replacable batteries, you could just buy another battery and replace it yourself. I have no idea why we can't do this now.
Power density and all of the problems that are fallout from high power density. A modern LiPoly battery contains a lot of energy. It's stored in a chemical that is highly reactive with oxygen, which you happen to be surrounded by at the moment.
Watch some videos on lithium battery fires. Not only do they have extremely hot flames but they spray out molten bits of battery and can't be extinguished with water.
To make a LiPoly battery that can be safely handled by normal people it needs a strong outer casing. A sealed battery in a phone uses the phone's case itself as the battery's protective casing. A user replaceable battery would need its own strong case. The phone then needs to be larger to accommodate the extra volume or have a smaller battery which stores less power than a sealed battery of equivalent volume.
The market has rewarded thinner phones with long lifetimes but also high performance. That triple point is challenging if not impossible to hit without sealed batteries.
Were they waterproof? I certainly don’t remember my Nokia 3210 being even splash resistant.
> I have no idea why we can’t do this now
For better worse I think the answer is quite simple - a combo of ease of manufacturing, a long term trend of slimmer devices that is broadly supported by customer behaviour, and an extra place to suggest a device upgrade instead of a repair. You’re more than able to get pretty much any smartphone battery replaced with a manufacturer similar spec these days, and people still choose not to do so.
Waterproof phones with replaceable batteries existed, but they used more rubber and other tricks to pull it off. This had the advantage of making it a lot easier to close the phone again and still keep the water resistant properties.
Having replaced the battery in my old phone, I sure understand why people don't "choose" to do so. The battery itself is worth maybe 20 bucks but the labour and tools required to replace it cost much, much more.
Compared to spending 30 bucks on a secondary battery back in the day, things sure have gone downhill since the days of user-replaceable batteries.
Please name these waterproof phones with replaceable batteries. None of my Motorolas or Treos were waterproof. I believe that harden phones may have existed but were not available to normal consumers. Maybe I’m wrong which is why I want to learn what phones you’re talking about.
The G'zOne made headlines being the first water resistant phone and it had a replaceable battery from the very start. The Fujitsu F-02D was another good example, with a fully-featured touch UI while still boasting something other than the slab-of-glass designs of today.
These phones weren't very popular in the west (Japan in particular had a large waterproof phone market, allegedly because people were taking them with them into the shower), but they have existed for a years, before the first Androids or iPhones became water resistant.
Phones like the Samsung XCover (the Android 2.3 one from 2011) were sold worldwide and featured a hotswappable battery. Over time these became bulkier and frankly uglier as they doubled down on how "rugged" they were, but the technology was clearly there.
Almost everything is splash resistant for some definition of a splash. I bet any modern smartphone does better than any dumbphone with buttons, because water can't permeate either of the big flat sides. If the water doesn't get inside, it can't cause damage.
Here in the balkans, if you want anything local, you must find some private sharing site/tracker/forum with magnet links/etc., since no one really leaves stuff seeding on eg. piratebay for a long time (private trackers force you in a way), so much of the stuff becomes unavailable very soon.
The new avengers movie or whatever "globally popular" will always be available on every public tracker, but trying to find a good quality version of "Hajde da se volimo" is a pain :)
And ok, fair. But to be clear I’m not just downloading avengers-tier stuff! e.g. I’ve been downloading some French films from the 70s recently and had no trouble at all. But yes I can imagine that it’ll differ a lot by region. Thanks.
TBH, OS based parental filters are the optimal solution here, especially if implemented in a proper way.
Kids don't buy phones and computers, parents do. When setting up the account for the first time, the parents could set the account to be an "underage one", all the apps, browsers, etc., would get the USER_IS_UNDERAGE flag and filter content according to that. No need for every site to ask and verify the age, just set the date of birth at the time of purchase, set a parental password (for possible future changes, reselling, etc.) and prohibit formats/wipes/factory resets without a parental password being entered. The clerks in telco stores could even help with the first setup of that.
Same could be easily implemented in linux, via some user flag set by the su/sudo user during the first eg. ubuntu install.
Yeah, there’s negative backlash against the age gate stuff but as long as you’re implementing it without privacy concerns like ID collection and verification it’s actually a really good idea.
A parent can change the setting in the OS and have every website and app comply with the OS setting is such a better situation than having to deal with a patchwork of content blockers, social media account settings, and parental controls that leak like a sieve.
Realistically, parents often don’t really have a good way to know what websites and apps you sign up for if you don’t have a crazily locked down device. Parental controls are complicated for non-technical parents and they usually know less than their kids do about the Internet.
A global OS age gate solves a lot of those problems, especially since OS-level controls are way easier to enforce and lock down compared to other methods.
on-device filtering is the right way to go, but it shouldn’t be a matter of sending metadata about the user to a service- instead services should provide standard metadata about the content to the device and the device can choose what, if anything, to display.
This preserves privacy better by keeping more information about the user local, and gives people better tools to decide what metadata categories they want to filter- for their kids and for themselves.
That's much harder to implement. If you ban advertising eg. online casinos to underge users, the service would have to send two different ads (one 18+ and one for younger people too), and the browser would have to decide which one to play. Same for eg searching on google, browsers would have to filter out every <div> with adult content, meaning half the page would be empty, but with a browser "underage" flag, google could just turn on safe search and not allow turning it off.
That solution doesn't actually work, and it angers me that people can't see why it doesn't work. That solution requires that the entire website must be child-safe or none of it. That solution requires that Tumblr must ban porn if Tumblr has any underage users. The alternative would be that Tumblr would randomly not load for underage users because some recommendation or ad would be over 18, and so it would rapidly have none.
Why must an age rating apply to an entire website?
As one example, the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) (and to a lesser extent the prior Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSACi)) had a rating scheme that allowed sites to provide a default rating label that was then overridden for individual pages and resources using <meta> tags and RDF-based labels. For example, Tumblr could set a family-friendly default rating and append a different rating on specific user pages, images, or ads.
An even more granular scheme could be applied via HTML attributes which would allow an individual section, image, link, or text snippet to be marked e.g. as "sexual", "violent", "substance use", "spoiler", or even "unknown" for unreviewed user-provided content. Then leave it up to web browsers to choose whether and how to render elements with these attributes. (Hidden entirely? With censor bars? Pixelated?)
There would be substantial logistical and regulatory challenges to get websites to comply, but it doesn't seem substantially harder than the current age verification schemes.
Because let's say you have a website like Reddit with a mixture of 18+ and 13+ stuff. Something that's 18+ but not explicit gets really popular. Pornhub will now livestream congressional debates, someone posts a link to this, and it gets fifty zillion upvotes as people can't resist commenting "wtf". Now you have a dilemma: do you show it on the front page or not? If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page, which for many of them means they're locked out of the entire site because that's the way they know to access the site. But if you don't, then the law is forcing you to censor your front page for everyone, even for adults.
The solution is obvious: you show it on the front page if the user is 18+. However, your proposal deliberately forbids this and says the front page must be the same for everyone. Which leaves the other two bad options.
Haven't paid video streaming services solved that one already? Admittedly not with age verification, but you can set up child accounts. I presume Disney+ is ok here as they want to be in the family-friendly market but also offer content meant for young adults.
That's exactly what the law will do, but on the device. The parents will input the child's age during device setup, and then every service will query the age range based on that and work in "child account" mode.
Without any requirement for verification, it'll be completely up to the parents to decide what their child will see, while the services will only get the minimum information needed. It'll basically make parental control easy, but still in the parent's control.
> If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page
I don't understand why you think this is true when I specifically described a label that is applied to "an individual section" of the page.
To be more explicit: Today, each post on the Reddit front page appears in its own container element. If an 18+ post's container element could have some kind of "adult-content" attribute set then some web browsers could render the whole front page normally with the exception of that individual element. Perhaps they could black it out, collapse it, display it with a pixelated overlay and a "Request Access" button, whatever the browser supports and the device administrator prefers.
> The solution is obvious: you show it on the front page if the user is 18+. However, your proposal deliberately forbids this and says the front page must be the same for everyone.
Why do you think that my proposal requires that the front page must be the same for everyone? Providing different views to different users is the entire point of every child safety law and rating scheme I've ever seen. I'm merely saying that my preferred approach would be to mandate that potentially objectionable content is semantically annotated in the HTML somehow, so that each user's browser can apply whatever view restrictions (if any) the device's owner wishes. I think this is better than mandating that web browsers send personal information to every web site they visit and also mandating that sites pre-filter the content they send back.
First, leaking a device's content filtering settings is not the same as leaking a user's age bracket. For example, if the server identifies a web browser that isn't loading tags annotated with "sexual-content" that might indicate that the user is a child but could equally well indicate that they're a corporate office worker, religious, or anyone else who prefers not to see such content at the moment.
Second, if the standard defined multiple semantic tags or levels (e.g. violence, extreme violence, substance use, unknown, etc) then this gives more granular control to device administrators who may care more about some types of content than others.
Third, web browsers wouldn't even have to leak the content filtering settings. For example, perhaps an administrator could configure the web browser to render content overlaid with a semi-opaque blur, in which case the server would not know.
Fourth, and this is more philosophical, asking websites to provide more information to the device so that an admin can do their own filtering leaves the choices to them. Whereas if the only way a device admin can filter content is to submit the age of the device's user to a third party so the third party can decide how to pre-filter the content it sends back, that gives an uncomfortable amount of control to platforms and regulators.
Exactly like GDPR shouldn't have mandated millions of websites to pop up a consent form, as a global browser setting could would have set consent as a user preference.
But the objective of these regulations aren't what it says on the tin.
I would absolutely support that position if it were compatible with observable reality.
My family and school failed to stop me getting my hands on booze, fags, drugs, and porn. Teenagers are fundamentally not controllable. The Amish and the Mormons are having some success, but that's likely not what libertarians want to hear.
What you describe is the status quo. Parents and schools are already, variously, giving The Talk, confiscating devices, enabling internet filters. Society deems these measures ineffective. In tiny part, that's a skill issue, but mostly it's just trying to cut down a tree with a herring. Again: teenagers.
You may, of course, sulk about age restrictions on alcohol. Prohibitionists would like that. Keep your out of the contested zone, make them look reasonable.
If you want to stand on your principles, try seasteading. But I'd appreciate coherent contributions to the debate, to offset the excesses of the pearl-clutchers and the spies.
But that's the point of democracy, whoever was interested in the isue, went out to vote, kids are too young to vote, and more than half of people interested enough to go out, voted to leave.
You personally might have wanted to remain and wanted to raise the bar, but that's undemocratic, you can't just change the rules when you don't get the outcome you wanted.
I'm not from Britain, honestly I don't care what you guys do, but a majority of voters decided in a way they did, and you have to respect that.
I said 16 yo should've had a Brexit vote/say because, especially in this case, it's the kids that reap the choices made.
More Generally 16 year olds are old enough to take part in democracy vote-wise, and maybe in all votes too. The point being - look at the short term, actually make that 'not long term', policies being made now by us olds, they don't favor young people, on the whole - or their children.
I mean, so do the 14 years olds and 10 year olds, and newborns, and the ideas still separated, because future mommy and daddy didn't have sex yet.
But as a society, we've decided that 16 year olds are too young to do many proper things, be it buy alcohol in most countries, drive a car in many, open a bank account, or legally jerk off to porn. They don't watch the news, they have no recollection of previous governments and the promises that were made, never kept and are being made again, they have basically zero sense of taxes and also mostly don't pay any and have little experience with anything related to politics. Neither do most 18 year olds, but if we let them buy booze and drive, we also let them vote.
Usually the push for younger voters comes, when someone prefers a push to a generally more "left" side of spectrum, but even this is turning around, since in my country (slovenia) more and more younger voters are turning right (eg. in the last election), especially young men, since they feel left out by the "left" parties.
Ideally children are taught more about what voting is at school. Additionally they could vote in elections with their vote recorded but not counted. So they get into the swing of it. This might avoid rampant apathy, which suits extremes. Sidenote, I wouldn't want you to read into this I am ignorant just how third rate most political parties and their policies have become.
Look at the very popular Lack table, it's made from cardboard hexagons with four pieces of wood-like thing in the corners to hold the legs. You can't make that yourself for cheap, and just the material cost in eg. wood, would be more expensive than the full table in ikea.
Otherwise, there are many youtube channels specializing in woodworking where you can learn all the basics to design your own furniture, but it won't be cheap.
People like to complain about it not being solid wood but the furniture from Ikea, such as Lack and Kallax is fit for purpose and remains a low price despite the cost of wood going up a lot. And what you can get at a similar price point from Wal-Mart in North America, or Conforama in Europe, is much much worse quality. Especially the veneer which holds up from Ikea but is more like wallpaper if you spend the same price somewhere else.
Solid wood is cool in a way of being cool. It's dimensionally unstable to a point is not permitted for cabinetry in some countries. Also it's expensive and it takes a lot of time for a tree to grow to be turned into furniture.
In that regard plywood (or glulam) is still wood that can be laminated and stained/oiled, if one insist on wood.
It depends on your comparison; a Lack table is maybe an extreme example.
I say this because I’m currently working on a project to build a full kitchen’s worth of cabinet carcasses using good quality 19mm plywood, and I’m aiming for it to be cost neutral with Ikea’s kitchen cabinets, having sourced the plywood from a local DIY store. (Obviously ignoring the cost of my existing tools.)
Which is to say, if you could source plywood in volume (therefore cheaper per square meter) and amortise the cost of the CNC machine and other tools over time, I think it would be feasible to be close to cost competitive with IKEA‘s kitchens.
I'm not using CNC; I just agree with the previous poster that there's an opportunity. (I'd note that none of your subsequent post related to the comment you made about CNC?)
For my project, I believe 19mm is plenty for carcasses - just about every mass-produced kitchen uses 18/19mm chipboard frames, and they can last for decades, outside of abnormal abuse. The main reason for using the same size is easy compatibility with standard doors/fronts together with standard fitment hinges/runners, all of which I'll be purchasing. The tops will be either granite or concrete.
I don't disagree with there being an opportunity or using CNC, I only point out that pinning everything to materials suitable to widely available CNC is too limiting.
Like, using plywood for verticals is overkill, they don't experience any bending, while 19+19 is 48 so you might as well use glued wood board for example.
Billy bookcases though are just slabs of laminated engineered wood cut to rectangular dimensions, drilled with precision positioned and sized holes, plus a stack of dowels and camlock fasteners.
yeah, those cardboard tables.. I had to glue in 2-4 (5 by 10 cm) stringers and refix legs to them for it to hold a measly epson c8600 and even then it stands on wooden planks to distribute the load.
ikea is a great inspiration for making your own furniture and then a source for bearable spare parts.
Switzerland has been kicked out of Horizon programs so many times and had to build alternatives. By now everyone involved knows, Horizon is high risk program and access can be pulled at any time for political reasons, so it hasn't that much appeal anymore.
Because Swiss scientists and businesses want to collaborate and trade with European partner networks of science and industries.
One of the EU main principles is collaboration and win-win. It is not zero sum. Example: The Netherlands is wealthy and a net contributor, but would be poorer off from not being in the EU.
Also, be aware that your question easily leads to a follow-up question:
"Why don't we fund our own research and innovation?"
=> "Why do we fund research and innovation?"
What agreement? To join the EU you must change a lot of internal structures in your own government first, a lor of regulations must be changed to align with EU versions, laws have to be changed, even basics, like drivers licences and other documents.
Why spend millions if not billions on all that, impose laws that are maybe bad for normal people, and then figure out that people don't actually want to join the EU?
You would hold the confirmatory vote before you do all of that. You'd go to the EU, agree what joining looks like, and before doing any of the actual implementation you hold the vote
Except that the EU wouldn't let that happen. You need to do the restructuring before you become an EU member, the other way around would be rather silly for the EU.
Russia is just the current boogeyman, where you can call anything you don't like "russian propaganda" (like fighting for workers rights in US a few decades ago was just "commies", same for trying to stop the war in vietnam... "commies" everywhere).
I'm fine with overt propaganda. That can be addressed in an open public manner.
It's the insidious covert propaganda which leads to more war and calamity in the world.
"Sources say" .. "an unnamed source wishing to remain anonymous says" .. "officials in the administration say" .. we all need to lift our standards for truth.
I think it sucks - it definitely provided a balance to the CIA mouthpiece propaganda that has inundated Europe since the atrocities began.
But, it didn't work. Folks who care about these things, know how to gain access to rt.com, anyway. And fortunately there is a rising generation in Europe who are sick of the agitprop, see it for what it is, and seek to inform themselves.
There are, of course, still those who parrot the party line on either side. But there won't be balance - and thus truth - if one just decides to stick ones fingers in ones ears and not hear the opinion of the people they are being told to hate, by authorities.
It's not collectivism, it's the "no consequences" thing.
"back in my time" in what used to be yugoslavia, it was perfectly acceptable for an adult to slap/hit a kid who caused problem or was destroying stuff, if a dad had to come to school because the kid did something bad, that was a horrible punishment, plus no leaving the room after, no toys, no bike, no outside play, no nothing for some time.
Now? Parents protect their idiot vandal kids, threathen the school with lawyers, even if cops bring home a kid selling like weed and vomiting red wine, the parents will blame everything else except their little sunshine.
Even academically, kids can't read anymore, and we just push them on, no repeating and losing years, no nothing, here's a "2" (passing grade), go to next year, and after a few more pushes, you'll be someone elses problem, illiterate or not.
I remember this “time” in my US classroom where we were all punished with if one person damaged classroom property (or worse, school property) but no one was willing to speak up and tell on the offender.
I have similar stories from our local neighborhoods where another parent might yell at you but the tales of your exploits made it home before you did. And there consequences waiting for you.
It’s a matter of timeline, not country.
By the late 1990s, I started to see said teachers pushing kids along as to 1) not deal with them again, and 2) pressure from district/state to not have as many failing students a.k.a. optimizing for the metric.
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