> Creating a viable alternative to Visa and Mastercard requires “several billion euros” in investment, according to EPI’s own estimates. Low interchange fees under EU regulation make profitability difficult.
I think it's absolutely amazing that "crypto" (from bitcoins to shitcoins) have turned out to be no more useful as a currency than chips from the local casino. This has damaged their ability to function as a simple currency that can be used to pay for goods and services. And they have damaged the reputation of the whole distributed ledger technology to the point where, in 2026, banks aren't even considering implementing a closed circuit inter-bank distributed ledger as a way to send euro from one bank account to another. If the digital currency in this closed system was actual euro, there would be no reason to speculate on its value and turn the whole thing into a circus.
How the hell is it possible that they're still using the ATI domain and HTTP 2026? They acquired ATI 20 fucking years ago.
It really makes you wonder what level of dysfunction is actually possible inside a company. 30k employees and they can't get one of them to hook up certbot, and add an 's' to the software.
I don't know why these aren't used more in building fabric. There's a youtuber who makes these phase change solutions out of various salt mixes aiming for the correct change temperature for a specific application. Eg he made panels for his shed roof (keeps it cooler in sun, warmer at night). Obviously this works better to smooth out large, reliable daily temperature swings, and offers little to someone in a constantly hot or constantly cold place.
I live in Ireland where night/day temperature swings are small. To cool my attic on a hot summer day I'd need to move that heat into a large water tank that gets used for laundry, cleaning, showers etc and is refilled from cold mains water. But fitting an air to water heat exchanger inside my attic would be a big expense and I would have to make sure I didn't freeze the attic.
Regular air to water heat pump could be hooked into my existing tank I suppose?
The name of the YT channel is NightHawkInLight[0] btw. Absolutely worth checking out. He creates materials with extremely useful properties from household materials (eg. PCM (high heat capacity), highly reflective paintings, Aerocrete (high insulation/fire resistance), ...)
The next stage in all of this shit is to turn what you have into a service. What's the phrase? I don't want to talk to the monkey, I want to talk to the organ grinder. So when you kick things off it should be a tough interview with the manager and program manager. Once they're on board and know what you want, they start cracking. Then they just call you in to give demos and updates. Lol
There is the code, the recorded state of the infra when you applied the code and the actual state at some point in the future (which may have drifted) . You store the code in git, the recorded state (which contains unique IDs, ARNs etc) in a bucket and you read the "actual state" next time you run a plan, and you detect drift.
These days people store the state in terraform cloud or spaceliftor env0 or whatever. Doesn't have to be the same infra you deployed.
If you were a lunatic you could not use a state backend and just let it create state files in the terraform code directory, check the file into git with all those secrets and unique ids etc.
For me it's not arbitrary. An android device is a general purpose handheld touchscreen computer that happens to be used for music. That means a bunch of things to me:
1. "Touchscreen first" UX
2. Heavier than it needs to be
3. Worse battery life compared to a non-Android device
Using a touchscreen in the rain is impossible. Running out of battery sucks. Going for a run with a 240g brick is no fun, it'll pull your pants down to your knees and trip you.
Compare the specs:
Hiby R1
Dimensions: 86.9 x 60.6 x 14.5 mm
Weight: 118g
OS: HibyOS
Battery: 19 hour play time
Price: $159.00
Hiby R4
Dimensions: 129.6 x 68.3 x 18.5 mm
Weight: 231g
OS: Android 12
Battery: 11 hour play time
Price: $249
These are the things matter to me, in addition to the UX, sound quality, Bluetooth support, expandable / removable storage and sane file-based playlists.
> For me it's not arbitrary. An android device is a general purpose handheld touchscreen computer that happens to be used for music
Android is just an operating system. I’ve developed and shipped Android based devices that have no screen at all.
Android and Linux are both used for a wide variety of embedded systems. Saying they’re all general purpose computing devices isn’t true.
> Going for a run with a 240g brick is no fun, it'll pull your pants down to your knees and trip you.
Then don’t pick the largest device with a big screen? There are many smaller DAPs and phones that run Android. The reason that device is so large isn’t because it runs Android.
Generally, across most DAP manufacturers, the android devices are all of those things that I don't want, and the non-android devices tend to be cheaper, lighter, with better battery life. I don't specifically choose non-android, I specifically chose those other parameters and have simply noticed a pattern. I don't doubt you, but you haven't given any examples and I'm not going to spend my life searching for the exception that proves the rule.
My first Android phone was a Samsung Galaxy S2. It weighted two grams less than that Hiby R1. Of course it was much larger, but tiny by today's standards.
Now that I think about it, going no-buttons might have been a driver towards larger screens. Having at least a few buttons seemed to make it much less necessary.
Though I stand by my implied argument that older devices were not as heavy as we might remember them to be. And it is okay to consider 240g a bit too heavy in the context of a digital music player with no need for cassettes or mechanical parts.
Battery: 1AA gets 30h
Dimensions: 111.4 x 29.1 x 80.7 mm
Weight: 132g
Ok, so you were limited to 90 minute tapes with slow seek. But aside from that compare it to the specs I posted for the android vs non-android mp3 players. Remember, this cassette player has some seriously impressive clockwork inside that case and it's still smaller and much lighter than the android.
Also remember you can just buy another AA battery, and keep a few spares in your bag.
I've got the Hiby R1 and have been pretty pleased with it. The R1 doesn't actually run android but just straight linux. It boots up in about 6-8 seconds and returns to the place you previously were. As for physical controls it's got easy to identify buttons for volume, pause (double click for previous track) and
next track that are pretty easy to find in a pocket.
No experience with the R4 but seems to have good reviews with the hifi crowd.
Whats wrong with some Nokia brick? Has bluetooth, probably 3.5mm jack too, lasts a week, has more physical buttons than you need for playing mp3s. Costs little
I have a few, and for managing and playing music the UX is absolute ass. Fine for dialing a number and occasionally switching to silent mode, but that's about it.
You can write an agent.md file and gradually add to it as you develop the project. The reason junior developers get better is that the context goes from low to high over the time you spend working with them. Yes, "learning".
I've found that maintaining a file that is designed to increase the LLM's awareness of how I want to approach problems, how I build / test / ship code etc, leads to the LLM making fewer annoying assumptions.
Almost all of the annoying assumptions that the LLM makes are "ok, but not how I want it done". I've gotten into the habit of keeping track of these in a file. Like the 10 commandments for LLMs. Now, whenever I'm starting a new context I drop in an agent.md and tell it to read that before starting. Fella like watching Trinity learn how to fly a helicopter before getting into it.
It's still not perfect, but I'm doing waaaay more work now to get annoyed by the LLM's inability to "automatically learn" without my help.
There's limits to AGENTS.md too, a junior will start to understand the concepts/rationale and design decisions and be able to apply that knowledge to future problems, the LLM will not.
I think it's absolutely amazing that "crypto" (from bitcoins to shitcoins) have turned out to be no more useful as a currency than chips from the local casino. This has damaged their ability to function as a simple currency that can be used to pay for goods and services. And they have damaged the reputation of the whole distributed ledger technology to the point where, in 2026, banks aren't even considering implementing a closed circuit inter-bank distributed ledger as a way to send euro from one bank account to another. If the digital currency in this closed system was actual euro, there would be no reason to speculate on its value and turn the whole thing into a circus.
I'm sure I'm missing something (a lot actually)
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