I have 2012 Sonos hardware. You can still get the original Sonos S1 controller, which works with old stuff. It's pretty annoying that all the new stuff is S2 (and that app is better supported), but it's not as hard as you're describing it. You can get it off Google Play and just use it.
The quality of the software, and the fact that it isn't really updated, is another thing, but the actual software availability is there.
One place where "TVs" still remain fairly expensive is in large format touch screens. Outside of using IR frames, getting a large (40 inch) touch capacitive display still requires quite a lot of legwork. I've been trying to find them for my DnD map system Table Slayer [0] and I had to contact factories in China directly. It's still many hundreds of dollars per device even for raw hardware.
I suspect the main issue is economies of scale. There is little demand thus there are no multibillion dollar plants optimized for delivering them at scale. (The same reason why 8K TVs are not yet cheap.)
There used to be tons. Heck there were even options we used to use where you could overlay over your CRT. That market has leveled out to what the market wants at this point.
If you're right handed then I assume a USB camera from the back-right can either detect a big colored sylus, or your hand pointing. A hacked wireless mouse/device for buttons?
Long ago I did semiconductor work for https://www.flatfrog.com/flatfrog-board , which uses the beam principle combined with in-surface refraction, and I see they're still pretty expensive. You do get an awful lot of little DSPs around the edge for that price, though.
I worked on (and very briefly ran) MP3.com after the CNET acquisition of the domain (CNET only bought the domain, which I think was for $1 million). It had nothing to do with the original site mentioned here (good on them for archiving it).
The initial idea of the CNET version of the site was that in 2004 we assumed you would need a directory of which music was on which service. At the time there were quite a few (itunes, recently legal Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic...etc) and the thought was that the labels would sign deals separately on each, splitting where legal MP3s could be bought. Rhapsody was the only one where you paid a monthly fee for access, the rest were pay per song or album. The directory was similar to something like justwatch.com now, and it was really hard to build the data catalog from the early Internet spiderweb of music content from these services. Believe it or not, we got most of the data from FTP drops from each service. The site also would review all the different MP3 players of the time (there were a lot of them!).
The iPod and iTunes devoured the industry to a degree that no one needed such a directory. Everyone was happy to pay 99 cents per song, or get it illegally. Rhapsody, which was way ahead of its time, was too niche, and pre iPhone, no one could "stream" on anything buy a computer.
Everyone of course hated our new site. It didn't carry the spirit or the catalog of the indie bands from the original version (we didn't own any of the rights to keep the content), and all of those artists were rightfully very angry about losing a pay stream (which again, was a nod to what was coming later with YouTube partners). It got so bad that we had to remove the message boards completely because it was pure vitriol. We later added independent artist uploads, but by 2005 it was too late and the site mostly made money converting "eyeballs" (search any artist + mp3) into money through ads.
Despite all this, I had a lot of fun working on it, and as a young 24 year old who just moved to San Francisco it was a great way to learn about online communities and how they could turn on a dime. Other, later sites of mine took the lessons learned from MP3.com and became successful, but I'll always have a soft spot for MP3.com.
I read a really interesting post in The NY Times (having trouble finding it) that really broke down how crazy sports betting has gotten in the last couple years. The gist is that states love betting, because they can tax them at high rates with little pushback from citizens who are marketed that the money goes to schools. The sportsbooks have to eat the new tax, and change the odds so that they can make a profit. This forces more losers in the state, and causes possible indirect costs from people losing so much. It’s an ugly cycle where no one wins.
On the other hand, some fraction of people are going to gamble away their life savings on bad bets. No idea how you balance the two, but gambling addiction does have a human cost.
It is admittedly not that much different than any other addict looking for their next fix. Yet, if feels lot uglier when it is a billion dollar corporation on the other side optimizing for the human tragedy.
Sure, and I actually have less of an issue with gambling than I do with social media companies and indeed advertising companies in general, but in both situations it's a massive unaccountable corporation abusing people for profit.
Lot’s of people win from Facebook as a communication platform. It also does all kinds of explosive crap, but being able to keep up with distant family and friends has meaningful value.
I'm building Table Slayer[0]. It provides tooling to display battlemaps on TV-based tabletops for games like Dungeons and Dragons. The source is open[1] and it's built with Svelte, Partykit, Turso and Three JS.
I'm currently building a prototype hardware component (essentially a large format touch screen) that people can purchase alongside.
For those that are looking for something more advanced in the Android space a friend of mine built https://limitphone.com/ to handle something like this. It requires a reset, but comes with a lot more options.
Looks very interesting. The price is not good. I mean, we have to do it for 4 fones, that is 120 dollars per year, which is a lot of money, not in it's own, but it ads up with other subscriptions. The trial is too short, i think a months will be better.
This is why I love Lucia. They took the "teach a man to fish" route when they converted to a docs only approach. Now I've got my own auth system and understand a lot more about security.
I find the list hilarious, because Ben Franklin was a notorious player, and his time in France (as American ambassador) was legendary - if documented today, it would make the Wolf of Wallstreet jealous. In modern parlance, ‘coke and hookers’ galore.
He also, by all accounts, was instrumental in getting France to support the US war of independence, without which the war would likely have gone an entirely different way.
Not to say he treated anyone badly - by all accounts, all participants enjoyed themselves immensely.
But don’t take these pronouncements as documentations of fact, but rather playing to an audience. He was also one of the major publishers and propagandists in early America, and his audience was profoundly conservative (often in the puritan sense), rural, and poor. It’s how he made one of his first fortunes [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack].
He probably did follow some of them, when it suited him, but clearly was never hesitant to let them get in the way of a good time either. Taking it too literally is like taking one of those popular business books too literally.
Considering he didn’t have any embassy bureaucracy beyond a few staff helping him, and that any reply from washington would be many weeks away… it seems extremely unlikely he would have had much free time at all in Paris.
which part? your timelines seem pretty off if you think ‘weeks’ was a remotely possible timeline at the time either.
There was no electronic communication of any sort (electricity was barely understood at the time), and best case transit time was around 6 weeks each way, often 8-12 if possible at all. It was also highly seasonal, and still very dangerous.
So the absolute fastest turn around time was 12 weeks/3 months, and more realistically 4-6 months. With some decent odds that one of the legs of the trip might sink, losing all hands.
It’s why a literal founding father (and one of the most influential ones) was the ambassador. No one else could be trusted.
You seem very confused… “many weeks” was the exact quote. “few” was only brought up after the bizarre reply as part of the explanation in “>>few weeks”.
And yes “many weeks” easily covers the range of 20 to 30 weeks.
I was teaching my dog to bark less, and I worried a bit that it might make him sit silently when I actually want him to bark, like if a stranger was coming through the window.
After a ton of training I realized he will never stop barking, he can realize that what he is doing is not right, but the urge to bark at every noise he hears will always be something we have to work on. We will never get it "right".
I think Ben Franklins strict rules are the same way. Obviously you can't run your entire life with military discipline, but you have to set the ideal fairly high because you are going to fall short over and over.
my dogs, when I have them, dont bark, but have exceptional freedom and are expected to act with discretion, I talk to my animals a lot, and watch them closely, responding to there needs and comunications......a big dogs warning "CHUFF" says everything needed....."big dog here....please observe formalitys, aproach calmly, say hi, be pleaant and confident, and all will be fine", with the understanding that I can order a stand down, for non dog people who are of no threat.
dogs, and animals, offer a real ,genuine , opinion on many aspects of life, a check.......,can I walk away from that expectant look...sometimes it's , ha! nice try you manipulative fucker, and other times it's hang it all, your right, lets do the thing, now.....
the leson bieng, to be aware of everything, and one of those things is that try as you might, there are loose ends, which will unpredictably re prioritise everything, and the final proof of living well, is having the capacity to re prioritise, and then go on from there
and a child, or a dog, or a horse, will call your bluff
Fair critique, we should never lose the spirit of play, but Franklin’s guidance seems very much in line with a quote from Gustave Flaubert I often see echoed:
> Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work
Genuine question: if you could tell Ben Franklin this, would you? I'm not even disagreeing with you, nor do I think there is a correct answer, but your answer and the reasoning behind it would genuinely interest me.
Sure I would. The conversation would go about as well as it would with any moral realist who believes he has identified the set of virtues or deontic norms which obligation would have us adhere to. I do not know if Mr. Franklin was a "serious man" as de Beauvoir described it, but these are certainly the same kinds of self-flagellatory ethics you would expect a serious man to have.
My interactions with such people usually reflect a piteous tone, as if it were a tremendous shame that I had not stopped for a second to think of the gravity of the situation. That is a necessary frame for them to hold given the preconditions which led to them
becoming a serious man.
while I like redhatting as much as anyone the interesting wrinkle to this criticism of franklin in particular is that this is much more like the way he actually lived than the principles he listed were. in fact, I dare say the only thing he missed on this list was making up for the non-existent sobriety of his youth.
"Franklin did not try to work on them all at once. Instead, he worked on only one each week "leaving all others to their ordinary chance." While he did not adhere completely to the enumerated virtues, and by his own admission he fell short of them many times, he believed the attempt made him a better man, contributing greatly to his success and happiness, which is why in his autobiography, he devoted more pages to this plan than to any other single point and wrote, "I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit."
> TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
"Not to elevation"? Let me direct you to the Finnish language. It contains two tightly related concepts: "nousuhumala" (ascending alcohol buzz) and the subsequent & corresponding "laskuhumala" (descending alcohol buzz).
If you recall the course of an evening of overindulgence, you may notice that these two concepts do describe the terrain.
AIUI these are from his autobiography, which he wrote during the last 20 years of his life. I wonder if he wrote this section before his decade in France? As I understand it, while there, he very intentionally led a life with little temperance, silence, frugality, moderation, and chastity.
This is a little disingenuous. As far as I know, v3 isn't going anywhere. There's what... weeks until May 2025, which would be four years?
4 years in JavaScript land is actually pretty long. Zod has a pretty good maintenance record. I don't see how a statement like yours can be made without snark. Calling it a "throw-away" library is pretty brash.
This looks like a good update that sticks to the formula.
> 4 years in JavaScript land is actually pretty long
For non-JS developers to get a sense of how long this is, companies have probably migrated from React to Vue to Svelte to Solid and then back to React in this time.
The quality of the software, and the fact that it isn't really updated, is another thing, but the actual software availability is there.
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