So I don't play that type of game. Has anyone here played those, and had the gambling feeling over these loot boxes? The summary is rather damning, but I'd like the opinion of an adult gamer.

It's not e-ink, but the screen is tiny and a low resolution. In addition, it only comes on when you plug something in or push a button and turns off automatically after about 5 seconds.

I haven't noticed any meaningful impact on the battery, although I don't continually mash the button to keep the display on.

I have an Anker charger with a tiny screen that tells me how much charge I have, how much charging time I have left, the time it'll take to recharge to full and whether low power 5W charging is enabled.

Whilst I don't disagree that some companies appear to be going completely overboard with features, I don't think a small screen showing useful charging related information should be automatically seen as a bad thing.

It's not just powerbanks that have unnecessary features. Chargers are affected too: the new Anker Nano 45W (A121D) doesn't support AVS, and PPS is limited up to 16V (not 20, what most laptops want). But it has a smart interactive display... you could argue that the old version is better.

Okay, but you have to admit it's useful to distinguish between the intelligence that AI seems to display, and that humans seem to display.

Actually, this is also why I stopped using Waze. Coming back from Heathrow once, I could have just taken the M4 and South Circular, but Waze claimed it would save me more than seven minutes on 25-35 minute journey, so I thought I'd give it a go. It took me through Hounslow and the back streets of Isleworth before crossing the A316 bridge in to Richmond. It ended up taking at least 15 minutes longer than the easy route and a vast amount more effort, in the dark. Much of that extra time was either reversing in to a gap between parked cars to let somebody by, or waiting for an oncoming car to do the same for me.

This has been one of my biggest frustrations with Waze for years - it has no understanding of how difficult a road is to drive. It'll happily send you off an easy, fast, well-lit motorway onto a difficult, narrow, unlit B road if it thinks it can save two minutes on a two-hour trip.

The stupid thing is that in the UK, road types already hint at how easy or hard they are to drive. Motorways (M roads) are the easiest, then A roads, then B roads. You could even go further by looking at the number of digits - single-digit routes tend to be simpler than three-digit ones. Sure, there would be exceptions (like the M25 compared to the M6), but overall it would make routing far more sensible than what Waze does now.

Mod parent up, very insightful summary.

It's a great feature but what's weird is that "Live Translation with AirPods is not available if you are in the EU and your Apple Account Country or Region is also in the EU." https://support.apple.com/de-d...

Whilst the headline is amusing, it's worth noting that the tribunal found in her favour because the company didn't follow the correct process in sacking her.

In other words, if you call your boss a dickhead and they dismiss you properly, you won't have a case to argue..

If they win any sizeable market share, their prices will go right up.

I don't think that is an issue. If the prices become uncompetitive then someone else (even Apple) is free to step in and offer a cheaper alternative.

The whole reason Apple got away with charging so much was because they set the App Store rules so no-one could offer an alternative.

This seems perfect for education. We give the students a Raspberry Pi, a breadboard, an SD card and an image. And we want to include some libraries on the image so they can play around with a couple of electronics components. This seems quite useful for that.

I have the feeling that these hardcovers are gifts. And like you said, if you buy it for yourself, you get the paperback because they're actually more compact, lighter etc.

Like you, I used to visit more frequently. I'm amazed it's still going. People used to blog here, too :-)

Believe it or not, but I wholeheartedly subscribe to this philosophy. Anyway I think I didn't explain well. The generated podcast would first start about "this region is beautiful, but I also think it's important to think about being responsible for nature". And then what happened, they didn't actually talk about what they DO, but instead would repeat variations of the theme. The sentences themselves would sound fine, but the whole conversation would actually be nonsense.

A friend of mine is building an app centered around hiking, a subject I'm mildly interested in. So he sent me a file called "podcast.mp3" without any comment, so I figured he found it interesting and wanted me to listen to it. So I did, and I thought to myself, what a weird conversation. They talked about this particular (existing) region, but they started droning on and on how it wasn't just about hiking but also being about responsible for nature. No sane person would talk like that, and when I figured out it was just AI vomit, I angrily messaged him back how he basically wasted my attention like that.

Technically it's a mild miracle. But the output is utter garbage, reurgitated chewed-up nonsense. Do not spend any minute of your time on this generated trash.