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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I once had a brand new disc (from a multi disk movie box) which has never been played. When I inserted the disc into a laptop disk drive (those where you have to press the disk onto the holder in the center) the disk completely shattered. It turned out that the material of the disk has aged to a point where it became brittle, despite of never been exposed to UV light or anything else. It probably could have been stored at wrong ambient temperatures in the warehouse. The said disc and the movie box was made in 2004.


  • We are approaching the time where the lifespan of CDs (DVDs, BlueRay etc.) from the late 90s and early 2000s reach their limit.

    In general, factory-pressed CDs and DVDs are expected to last many years if you store them under ideal conditions, but the exact lifespan can vary. Some studies have suggested that factory-pressed CDs and DVDs may last for up to 20 years or more under ideal conditions, while others have found that they may begin to degrade after just a few years.


  • Despite not answering your question correctly, I have something where Windows is superior to macOS:

    When you start a Windows program and want the program window to fill your screen completely, you just have to drag the window towards the upper edge of the screen and the window fills the whole size of the screen.

    On macOS there is not such an option. You have to drag the program window manually to the full size of the screen. Although there is a full-screen mode (green button in the upper left of the window), when activated, the window is in full screen, but the menu bar at the top of the screen is hidden. However, at least macOS remembers the last size of the program window, so you don’t have to drag it to full screen size again.



  • A cheap phone last about as long and does 90% the same stuff

    This is true. You can get an almost equal performance out of a cheap phone. But I learned that more expensive or high-end phones recieve more software updates than cheaper entry-tier phones.

    For instance, I own an LG K8 (Model LG-M200E) from 2017. The battery still holds enough charge (although it is designed to be replaced), the camera works, the touch display still responds properly - but it only recieved one update (Android 7 --> Android 8) in 2018. I wouldn’t consider it secure and I certainly don’t have my online banking on the phone. Meanwhile it gets very hot and slow when I use Google Maps. Unfortunately, there is no way to replace its operating system with an alterntive OS, linke Grephene OS or Lineage. None of the many alternative operating systems offer suppert for this specific model.

    My next phone will propably be mid-price ranged.

    Edit: typos










  • I think this is because it is pretty boring to film a computer in action, because it does noting - it doesn’t move for example. So beeping sounds were added for every action a computer would do: opening or closing windows, transferring files to a disk, calculating,…

    These sounds were added at a time computers were not that common in every household and to emphazise that the computer is doing something. In recent movies, computers are more silent.

    Another thing film makers did to show interaction with a computer is the constant usage of the keyboard. Every thing is done with the keyboard. Open a window: type 5 sceonds on the keyboard. Transferring a file onto a disk: type the whole bible on the keyboard. This was done because it would be pretty boring to show someone use the mouse or drag-and-drop files.

    It its somehow compareable to the movie trope of constantly reloading a gun. You can see this often in older movies: the protagonist is going inside a building and he is reloading his gun. Then he stops a the corner of a hallway and is reloading the gun again - despite no shot has been fired. This was also done to show the audience that a gun will be involved.


  • Of course many comments in this threas are exaggerated; there won’t be played any ads into your brain.

    But there are some implications for the usage of Neuralink that are worth thinking about it - especially when it comes to privacy:

    Given that it “just” runs with firmware, so that the implant can function in a way most stable and reliably, and also given that there will be no subscription model involved into all of that, will the user (patient) be able to control the functionality of the implant (e.g. controlling the intensity of the eletric signal sent out from the implant to counteract the intensity of a tremor)?

    And how will that happen? One thing I could think of is to control the implant with a smartphone app. How good will that smartphone app be? Will it be programmed sloppily like these apps we know from Internet-Of-Things-Apps and have a ton of bugs? Are those (medicinal!) apps secure in terms of privacy? What is with the product support? Will the implant be discontinued after a few years (and also the app)? What if your smartphone fails (no power or hardware failure, or after an update it doesn’t work)?

    A friend of mine has an app to monitor her blood sugar. She is not qute satified with the app. Luckily the provider of those diabetes sensors provided a separate device, so that the app is just an addition for measuring when you are travelling, for example. But in their last iteration they tried to omit the separate device, probably in order to save costs. My friend had to explicitly ask for it.

    With that in mind I’m not keen on having control on such medicinal devices with a smartphone only. If the smartphone fails, there would be no backup. Will such similar things be the case regarding Neuralink?