opps - That's not the comment I wanted to make.

I didn't know "The Expanse" was based on books, however I can say the TBP books are excellent. Great to see the Chinese producing Sci Fi that (mostly) transcends borders.

Yeah - great books there 52/2. Bear is certainly one of the greats R.I.P, up there with Clarke. One book Bear wrote "City at the end of Time" seemed to be a homage to Clarke's "City and the Stars" which was one of my favorites.

Then there were the Killer B's (Brin, Bear and Benford) who I think expanded Asimov's Foundation - not sure if that's what Apple are playing though as I haven't read Foundation or his Robot series -- yet.

We can't talk about Bear though without mentioning "Eon" which is probably one of the greatest Sci Fi books ever written. I know it's a big call, Eternity, Forge of God and Anvil of Stars are of similar quality - but also much of his stuff from Star Trek to the back story for Halo took both of those into hard sci fi territory.

No, it's a challenge finding decent Sci Fi after consuming the greats. Reynolds, Hamilton, Reed also write good science fiction that's worth checking out.

I'm not sure how that's possible. Unless Wikipedia is wrong and Google search is equally failing to find a later version, the last version of iOS that the iPhone 5s supports is iOS 12 (2018). The last version of iOS 12 ever released was iOS 12.5.7, which was released in January of 2023.

Are you sure you're not talking about the iPhone 6s?

Similar age to me. I started on comic books, a stack as big as I was, then sci fi books, then electronics, then computing which made me the geek I am today!

It could be you dissociating because of something you are reading, I've had similar experiences. It's worth looking into - you never know what it will uncover for you.

I'm usually too engrossed to care, however I have had a few people come up to me and comment that I was actually reading a real book and then asked me about it. So it can oddly be a way to meet people, especially if they've read the book.

That's fantastic, I wish I had the time, I only get through about 18-30 a year reading over breakfast, which is mostly studying. My rate climbs when I'm on vacation which is when I have a chance to read some Sci Fi for pleasure, so you're really living a readers dream there.

Yes - I get lower levels of fatigue with paper as well. I can't remember where I read the study on retention rates where plain old paper books still rule around 80-90%, screens are around 25-30%. Apparently it's due to the amount of energy the visual cortex spend on determining a character. Paper has a hard outline between black and white whereas screens have digital noise (we all know as dither) that causes the brain to have to determine what the character is. That's why real books on paper are my choice for all technical reading.

It's such a good point you raised though, reminding me of eye care experiences I had to do so I could keep reading. I had many cervical spine issues which is *still* taking a lot of work with physio therapists and chiropractors to resolve. I was getting double vision - but only in one eye - that was affecting my reading and causing concern that soon I would not be able to see the page.

The treatments started to relieve the symptoms but the headaches were getting worse. I started using some eyedrops called "Liquid MSM drops" with > 15% MSM which stung a lot however something started happening in the double vision eye and over the course of a few month (with the help of some minor surgery from a doctor) a sebaceous cist the size of a chik pea was removed from behind my eye - I was so sick.

Combined with the above the headaches have been slowly fading, eyesight has been improving and slowly getting sharper.

Hilarious that you grammar policed yourself after the Bradbury reference. PKD is a great author too.

to watching porn by fleshlight.

As long as Rage keeps going. They get famous musicians in to play whatever they like. Tonight's DJ is Jocko Homo from Devo. One of my favorites was Mike Patton from Faith No More. So many great guests.

From looking at the current playlist isn;t as long as I expect, it generally plays music videos from 12:00 am to 7am without a single commercial, not that I can stay awake all night anymore to find out. lols Still great to just have on. Enjoy!

Humanities professors and others have made this claim, but it doesn't match my experience. Now I started out as a double major, BA history & math. I dropped history, because it was NOT about 'critical thinking' but rather about 'parroting what the professor thought.' In one particularly notable example, I started with a well accepted historical hypothesis (which I documented through citations) and then reasoned about the consequences. That paper was marked poorly because the prof didn't agree with the hypothesis, with little about my subsequent reasoning. The nice thing about math was you both knew when you were right or wrong. I cannot credit my history courses (both before and after dropping the major) as teaching much about critical thinking; the Logic course I took was better at that, as was the Analysis of Algorithm computer science course. Some of the history courses did teach me about constructing connection chains, about properly citing sources, and maybe about weighing the value of sources, but that's an enabler of 'critical thinking,' not the end-state. Mebbe I just had lousy history profs.

I still read A LOT of history (and read very little technical stuff since I retired.) What I've learned is in part how much I have to read to be able to actually conduct 'critical thinking'. After reading maybe 15 books on the time of Augustus, I can finally critically read Syme's "The Roman Revolution," and understand both its accomplishment sand its limitations. And on a couple of topics, I know the literature well enough to say "Huh, he says X but another guy says Y. Why do they disagree?" On those topics, I'll actually look at the references first when I pick up a new book, to make sure the author has done due diligence across the set of sources.

The last security update for the iPhone 5s was in January of 2023 — three years ago.

Security updates.

At no point did I claim that size doesn't matter. I said thickness doesn't matter, at least within reason. Width and height both matter a LOT, because they dictate how hard it is for you to hold it in your hand and control the phone without having to use both hands. Thickness does not meaningfully affect usability unless you are carrying it in your pocket, and only to a limited extent even then.

What I'm asking for isn't even difficult. You have three dimensions, and they are mostly interchangeable. If you need more board space, just stick a second board behind the first with an interconnect, and you're done, so long as you're not sending high-speed data or something. If you need more battery space, stack them front to back. Use the third dimension instead of being a moron who focuses on making products thinner — something that exactly NONE of your customers are asking for, BTW, and so many design problems become so much simpler.

Now to be fair, the phone I want will *massively* piss off all of the app UI designers who try to cram too damn many buttons into their user interfaces as they try to find ways to scale back down to a 5s-sized screen, but that's somebody else's problem.