Ok, so the systemd change was acceptable (since it was optional), this is absolutely not. Fuck this shit. If it's coming to NixOS I'm going to do everything I can to stop it, and otherwise I'm keeping a Nixpkgs patch that reverts the commit

Europe is SO small

Depends on what you count as Europe. If you include Turkey, Caucasus and/or the western part of Russia, it is fucking huge (~7500 km drive from Vorkuta to Cabo da Roca). Even if you only count EU countries, it's still not that small (~5000 km drive north-to-south). And it's also way denser than the US so there's more to see overall, you can't even explore any single country comprehensively in two weeks time (apart from microstates, of course)

I guess the only thing that reads most of those is one poor regexec(3) in a loop.

I think all the information is pretty well-known in this community, but here's a summary:

• Renewables (specifically solar + batteries) are an inevitable future of energy production due to technological advancements and economies of scale improvements; you should not oppose them but welcome them
  • We are at a tipping point where solar + batteries is now the cheapest energy source available
  • Land use for solar farms is not a big issue, they are much more energy efficient per unit area than the ethanol corn that currently plagues the US
  • Replacing all ethanol corn fields with solar farms would make almost twice as much energy as the US grid is currently producing
• Renewables are better than fossil fuels because they do not require continuous extraction; when a solar panel or battery has been "used up" and is degraded, it can be recycled, whereas fossil fuels can only be burned once after extraction
  • The end goal is an almost-closed-loop system for all energy production, similar to what we have with lead-acid batteries already
  • Recycling solar panels is relatively easy because they are mostly glass and aluminum, which we know how to recycle well, and we could probably figure out silicon too
  • Recycling batteries is a harder problem but possible too if we put some effort in; currently the recycling capacity is lacking because there's not enough batteries being recycled, since most of them are still working fine in EVs sold since the start of EV boom
  • Worst-case, we can literally just grind up batteries into battery mush and refine it, same as we do with ores from which the raw materials come in the first place, but likely something better is possible
• Alec describes his personal politics, how he values labor and working-class people, and how he thinks immigrants are hard-working people who need to be welcomed and cared for
  • Trump and Republicans as a whole are fascists and lie constantly, which needs to be called out and stopped
  • ICE must be abolished and its thugs tried for their crimes
  • Democrats are not doing enough, and in fact are pretty bad on some points, but it's still better to vote for them
  • People need to organize with their neighbors, care for each other first and foremost, and defend themselves against the government

Alec's personal views are a relief, I think it's a shame he didn't go deeper into them before (IIRC he had a video where he called out right-wing misinfo but stopped short of any direct calls for action). I suppose the contrast between his usual "tech presenter/science explainer" and this clearly righteous political call for action might get through to some people better.

I'm sure you are already aware, but just in case, there's a lot of prior work in getting a truly Linux mobile phone.

There are ready-made devices like PinePhone (the PinePhone Pro looks the most promising one of the bunch), Librem 5, and Liberux Nexx. I think at least some of those companies publish schematics for their boards, you should probably check those out if you want to design your own.

There is also another direction, taken by postmarketOS and the like, to install Linux on a phone that shipped with Android out of the box.

It should be easy enough to install postmarketOS on your device, since it seems to have support for raspberry pi. The benefit of postmarketOS here is that it makes it really easy to install mobile Linux UI shells, like phosh, gnome-mobile, plasma-mobile, or sxmo. This will let you try all of them out and maybe pick one as a starting point for your software stack.

You want AI in your browser? Just add as a "search engine" option, with a URL like

https://chatgpt.com/?q=%25s

, with a shortcut like @ai. You can then ask it anything right there in your search bar.

Maybe also add one with a URL with some query pre-written like

https://chatgpt.com/?q=summarize this page for me: %s

as @ais or something, modern chatbots have the ability to make HTTP requests for you. Then if you want to summarize the page you're on, you do Ctrl+L Ctrl+C @ais Ctrl+V Enter. There, I solved all your AI needs with 4 shortcuts without literally any client-side code.

Few additions:

• "reverse thrust" → "slow down (after you land)"
• (at foot pedals) "Push both to brake (after you land), push one or the other to turn"
• "go fast" → "go fast (keep levers together)"
• "keep it above the ground" → "keep it above the ground, but not too high"
• (at IAS indiciator) "how fast you're going", "keep between 170 and 400, lower to 140 when landing"
• "make wings bigger" → "make wings bigger, required when taking off or landing"

You gotta admit though, Haskell is crazy good for parsing and marshaling data

Yes, running OnePlus 6 with Mobile NixOS (actually mostly just NixOS with a couple modules from mobile NixOS). I will try to make the config public when I get it into a less rough state. It's... useable as a daily phone, but you have to be really into it to do it.

It's not like desktop Linux where if you're a tech enthusiast you can ignore a few rough edges and just use it like you would a more mainstream OS.

I had to flash a specific old version of OxygenOS, using almost undocumented tools, which could easily brick the phone if something went wrong, just for GPS to work. I have to recompile my kernel every time it updates. I had to write my own scripts for the hardware slider thing to work (which has a nice benefit of letting me use it for whatever I want; I want to make it switch between NORMAL and INSERT in my editor just as a laugh).

When was this written?

Given it has a (good quality) color photo attached to it, it was definitely published when we already understood the theory of electricity really well, so it doesn't get a pass.

We don’t know what any of the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) really are

I'd argue that for fundamental forces, "what they are" and "what they do" is the same, by definition.

And in any case, mains supply in your home is not just electromagnetic waves vibing around, it's electrons engineered to move through wires in very specific ways, transferring power from a moving magnet or (increasingly) a photon falling on a semiconductor junction, to move another magnet, heat up some metal, or (increasingly) bounce around some electrons between some semiconductor junctions and then emit photons from other semiconductors junctions.

Finally, most of the text is bullshit even if you don't think we know what fundamental forces "are":

No one has ever felt it

You can easily feel electric discharge. Just rub your hair on some wool.

No one has ever heard it

Just be around a thunderstorm. Thunder is the sound of an electric discharge.

We cannot even say where electricity comes from

You can see where the energy that moved the electrons in your wires came from: https://app.electricitymaps.com/

It was written by a complete and utter buffoon, and it can't be redeemed with any amount of handwaving or philosophizing over what it means to "know" or what things "are". Either that or it's satire (which might well be the case).

Man, I'm getting old. I don't understand why all jokes have to be fake twitter screenshots now.

Me

My gf