Monthly Archives: May 2023

CodeWeavers Now Controlled by an Employee Ownership Trust

Source: Hacker News

Article note: That's pretty cool. In addition to other things, these are the people doing most of the Wine/Proton work, and having them be in a state less prone to private equity whims is a good thing. It looks like a much weaker form of employee ownership than a CoOp or something, but still leagues better than what usually happens these days.
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Disney’s absurdly expensive Star Wars hotel is shutting down

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Article note: I actually thought the concept was _super_ cool (a human-scale closed Starship for days-long RP) but uh... yeah it was niche and _absurdly_ expensive.
An image showing the inside of Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser experience
Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

Disney World is shutting down the Galactic Starcruiser, the immersive Star Wars-themed hotel that costs around $5,000 for a two-night stay. In an update on Disney’s website, the company says the Starcruiser will host its final guests from September 28th to the 30th.

“We are so proud of all of the Cast Members and Imagineers who brought Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser to life and look forward to delivering an excellent experience for Guests during the remaining voyages over the coming months,” Disney’s update says. “Thank you to our Guests and fans for making this experience so special.”

Disney’s Galatic Starcruiser hasn’t been around for long, as it only first opened its doors to guests in March 2022. The lavish hotel is modeled after...

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SpaceTop, an innovative laptop without a screen

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Progress toward gibsonian decks (particularly the description from Idoru). My desire for _decades_ from HMDs has been "Comfortable for extended text manipulation" and no one has delivered, but maybe it's finally happening.
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Beepberry is a Blackberry keyboard tinker toy from the founder of Pebble

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Article note: This looks like a ridiculous amount of fun that I don't have time for right now.
Beepberry device in between a banana and apple
The ‘Beepberry’ with other fruits accompanying it. | Image: SQFMI

Are you a hacker who happens to miss their Blackberry? Looks like there’s a new product that’s just your speed: the “Beepberry.” It literally grafts the keyboard of a Blackberry Classic onto a pocketable custom board designed to fit a Raspberry Pi Zero W, all paired with a 400 x 240 “Memory LCD” screen that looks like it was ripped from an old graphing calculator — but is a bit more sophisticated.

Beepberry is designed by Eric Migicovsky, founder of the gone-but-not-forgotten Pebble smartwatch and more relevantly co-founder of Beeper: the hacky all-in-one messenging app that stuffs every service from WhatsApp to iMessage (using a jailbroken iPhone) into one place.

I’m excited to introduce a little side project I’ve been working on:...

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OpenAI chief goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Oh boy, attempting regulatory capture on the current dangerous-only-because-humans-are-dumb-panicky-dangerous-animals hypetrain. That sure is a bad look.
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The Babylon 5 animated movie is B5: The Road Home, and here’s what it’s about

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Article note: There have been plenty of disappointments for B5 followups (...both because some didn't come to fruition and because some probably shouldn't have), this sounds both promising and credible.
Image: Warner Bros. Animation

Babylon 5 is coming back as an animated movie, series creator J. Michael Straczynski revealed last week, and today The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive on what it’s about: Sheridan traveling through the multiverse in search of a way home.

The basic synopsis, via THR:

“Travel across the galaxy with John Sheridan as he unexpectedly finds himself transported through multiple timelines and alternate realities in a quest to find his way back home. Along the way he reunites with some familiar faces, while discovering cosmic new revelations about the history, purpose, and meaning of the Universe.”

As Straczynski hinted, many of the original surviving cast members are returning, including Bruce Boxleitner (Sheridan), Claudia Christian...

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Ask HN: Why is the state of “smart home” devices still so dire?

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Because perverse incentives. The vendors aren't building devices for customers, they're building profit-seeking vessels for VCs and megacorps. If you build good devices, they need to work offline, without a subscription or external connectivity, and they need to freely interoperate over open standardized interfaces... and those conflict with the profit-taking misfeatures that attract funding.
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Passkeys will be importable, exportable, cross-device, and across managers

Source: Hacker News

Article note: ...I'll believe it when there are usable implementations that aren't megacorp roach motels.
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Report: Halo’s final survival attempts made even Amazon’s workers concerned

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: Connected health gadgets are a mistake. The value proposition to the manufacturer is almost entirely in terms of data harvesting, and health data is about as personal as it gets. Plus, they're now bricking the devices since they didn't monetize them in the reprehensible ways they considered. ...Now can we get some decent offline health trackers?
Amazon Halo

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

Amazon is discontinuing its Halo project, including the Band and View fitness trackers and the Rise bedside sleep tracker, making the devices useless on August 1. Amid the company's largest-ever wave of layoffs and reports that even the popular Alexa voice assistant has failed to bring in money, this wasn't surprising. It's still sad, though, to realize that countless devices will become obsolete and at huge risk of becoming e-waste (despite Amazon telling customers to recycle devices through its recycling programs, all costs covered).

But perhaps it's just as well, because a report from The Verge today claims to peer into Halo's last attempts at survival. And the Halo that Amazon reportedly tried to realize is one we're happy not to encounter.

Halo reportedly creeped out its own creators

Reported plans for Halo could have pushed products to gather more data on how users exercise in order to provide virtual rewards, to offer recommendations, and to track performance. However, the features Amazon is said to have explored sound potentially invasive, collecting uniquely personal data.

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