This is exactly how I use Syncthing, and as the author says, it sure would be nice if more things were just files. Really, most things are stored locally as files, but not always in a way that plays nice with syncing. Like, I can sync my Firefox profile between machines (it's all in one folder), but I found it prone to conflicts, with little to resolve those conflicts.

In a similar vein, local-first apps built with Conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs) can be another way to avoid server dependency. I haven't seen any significant apps built this way yet (just occasional blog posts about it). I imagine the CRDT approach would work better for individual apps, since conflict resolution can be written in a way that works best for a given app, but I also imagine that such apps would not play nicely with a generic sync solution like Syncthing.

I have been using a BangleJS 2 for the last year, and have quite liked it. There is a companion app, Gadgetbridge, to install on your phone, which is available through F-Droid (there is a Bangle-specific version of it, or a generic version that supports a bunch of other smart watches). There is also an app store (all free software) for apps that run on the Bangle itself. It includes a heart monitor, but no music streaming.

I've also been watching rePebble as they start making new Pebble smartwatches. I've never owned one, but a lot of people swear by them. They are now fully open source and have an app store. No idea if they can stream music.

Are you talking about the calendar that appears when you click the time on the (by default) right side of the task bar? Because mine shows a full month. This is how it's been since I upgraded from Windows 10. So I don't know what setting you have to change, but at least it's possible.

Just finished Stray. Yes, I got it because you play as a cat (who was created with great detail), but it also has solid storytelling, world building, and level design.

I got hung up on this line:

This requires deterministic math with explicit rounding modes and precision, not the platform-dependent behavior you get with floats.

Aren't floats mostly standardized these days? The article even mentions that standard. Has anyone here seen platform-dependent float behaviour?

Not that this affects the article's main point, which is perfectly reasonable.

I've noticed that, if an equation calls for a number squared, they usually really mean a number multiplied by its complex conjugate.

Days before the 2016 election, 538 (which Nate Silver founded and was leading at the time) ran an article titled "Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton". Nate Silver and 538 did some of the best forecasting of that election. Don't conflate him with others' screwups.

You need to sleep.

And here I was thinking of https://xkcd.com/664/

Also worth noting this article is nearly five years old. Rust's first stable release was nearly nine years ago, so its (stable) age has more than doubled since then. I expect Rust would look a lot more mature if the article was written today.

Fairphone is well supported by open-source Android distributions like Lineage and /e/OS. Not all Android is involved with Google.

Here is their reasoning, basically summarized as "it's easier to get everything for games into a new language than bolting it onto an existing language". I also recall seeing a blog post where they said their initial implementation of GDScrip took fewer lines of code than embedding Lua did.

Note Godot does officially support C# and C++, and there is unofficial support for other languages too. But they commonly recommend GDScript for beginners.