By then, I don’t think that the use of earth’s orbital period around the sun would make sense as a unit of measurement. It is important to track the seasons if you’re living in an agricultural society. But the orbital period of the earth is not consistent across time, nor the time it takes for the earth to rotate. It doesn’t make a good unit of measurement. And don’t get me started on leap years, leap seconds, negative leap seconds, timezones and daylight saving times…

I’d prefer to base the new unit of time based on “Plank time”. About 10^44 of these are about one second. Now if we switch to the duodecimal system we can define 12^41 × Plank time to be our standard unit. It’s about a third of an earth second. 144 of these (12^43) equal roughly 3/4 of a minute. 144 of these (12^45) is about 1.8 hours. 12 of these (12^46) could be the equivalent of a day, 12 of that could be an equivalent of a week, and you can find an equivalent for a year. The duodecimal is unnecessary, but it makes division a bit neater. Now peak a date well before the beginning of human history to avoid the need for negative years (BC / AD) and that’s it.

That way you get a single number that you can manipulate arithmetically. Not like yyyy/mm/dd format where each part is a different length.

It’s intentional. They’d like to drop features to cut on design and manufacture costs, while taking out features most of the target audience doesn’t really care about. Some of these are just greedy. Phones used to rely on microSD expansion, but once you drop this option you could charge for additional space much more than what the equivalent microSD card would cost. You can also stop shipping phones with chargers because most people have them anyway. This is pure profit as the customer is paying the same price, but doesn’t get a charger.

As for other features, they probably dropped them because people just didn’t care enough.

It seems to be incredibly difficult to design a phone from scratch, and that’s why we only see a handful of manufacturers, with the small endeavors being able to make something that looks obsolete by the time it rolls out and even then it takes a few months to overcome all the bugs and glitches. Fairphone is the closest we’ve got, but it’s still far off and strays further with each generation.

There are gaming phones, phones with crazy cameras, and iPhones where the lack of features is a feature. What I wish to have is a phone with as many features and functionality as possible.

That includes (but not limited to): IR blaster Headphone jack MicroSD card slot FM Radio RGB Notification/Status LED

Rather than a slim phone with a glossy finish that will pick up scratches right away unless wrapped in a phone case, the outer cover of the phone should be rugged and replaceable. Like with old Nokia phones. I don’t care about few extra grams, or another millimeter of thickness. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I was hopeful about the Fairphone at first, but they started removing features as well.

I really liked the times when features were added and not killed off.

10 years ago you could purchase a flagship phone with IR blaster for controlling whatever you couldn’t find a remote for, or trolling people in public spaces by turning off their TVs. Cloud storage wasn’t as popular, but if your phone died, the images were safe on the micrSD card. Bluetooth headsets were a thing, but you could always just use a cheap pair of headphones to stick in the headphone jack. People who desired it could install a custom ROM with all kinds of optimizations and less bloat. It used to be a lot more popular back then. Other than cameras, battery life, and reversible and more robust USB-C connectors, there isn’t much innovation. I used to feel like I owned my device much more back then. Now I only use the stock ROM, can either use wireless headphones or ones that use the charging port. I can’t insert a microSD, or test new features for Android ported from other devices by someone on XDA Developers. I’m not using the phone the way I want, but the way the companies who made it decided on.

Out of all types of space junk, I’d be least worried about stuff on the surface of the moon. If anything, these piles of human waste contain the gut bacteria of the astronauts and was exposed to decades of radiation, temperatures and extreme conditions. It will be an interesting thing to study once they’ll be able to create a research lunar base.

Looks better, but every time I tried it it didn’t work for me so much. I noticed that I associate an app with its color, and that it’s easier for me to look for something orange when I’m looking for Firefox than just the shape of the logo. This is one of the reasons why I hate Google Icon designs which basically use the same colors in their designs. Might look more aesthetical, but for me at least it is less practical.

Want to replace the battery on your 2 years old smartphone that is perfectly good, but the battery doesn’t last as long?

Just grab a heat gun and melt the glue around the screen. With a suction cup, pull the screen apart and pry around the perimeter to separate the screen. This might end up in your display cracking if you apply too much force. After the screen is successfully separated unscrew a large number of screws of all shapes and sizes and make sure not to mix them when you put them back together after you’re done. Carefully disconnect the tiny flat cable connectors. Then you need to separate the battery itself. It has two pull tabs that makes a satisfying noise when pulled, in order to release the glue. But especially if you’re not experienced these are likely to tear, leaving the battery attached. Don’t try to pull the battery away as it may result in damage to the battery and turn it to an instant spicy pillow or twist the frame of the phone making it wonky. You can use isopropyl alcohol to weaken the remaining glue in order to free the battery. After it’s removal, put the new battery in it’s place. Make sure all the alcohol had evaporated. Then put the phone back together pretty much as you took it apart. Make sure not to forget any screws or mix between them. Then glue the screen back together with a strip of glue. If you used to have water resistance it is now likely compromised.

That’s what it means to replace the battery in some phones. This shouldn’t be legal.

Schwarzenegger is basically two words for black fused together.

It is a lot better than it used to be. Emulation tools got much better over the last couple of years, and there are many things that required applications in the past and now just work from the browser. You can edit documents, send emails, play games and videos, configure devices, edit images. All from the browser - over windows or Linux.

Making the shift to Linux is easier now than it has ever been. Linux caught up, Windows got bloated, emulation and platform agnostic web services gave a lot more options for counteracting Windows main advantage - which is software compatibility. And as Linux gains popularity that is changing for the better as well.

You did pay for a computer. But not just with your money, you pay by being forced into using the services of the company that subsidized the price of your product. Be it Android bloatware that you can’t get rid of, a free version that keeps reminding you about the premium features or simply ads.

Back in the day, the products you bought didn’t keep trying to sell you other products. However, we tend to take for granted the amount and quality and value of services that companies just give for free. Back when free mailbox used to be limited to 6MB, encyclopedias and map services used to cost a lot of money. The sheer amount of things we can do today online without giving a payment method is astonishing. And it is not just because of the advancement in technology. Personally I prefer this model of giving a product for free and using it to promote the paid product as long as it “polite”. Those who would like to get a premium experience will pay.

You could use Linux to avoid paying for software while avoiding the bloatware. Linux had massively improved over the recent years in being noob-friendly. However, you still pay for it with your time as still there are things that are not supported and you have to come up with workarounds. Personally I use Linux, but it took me a while to get comfortable with it. Unlike Windows, I can configure it nearly any way I like. But I can’t recommend this to everyone.