"developed by Carrot Pop which measures the vertical distance that a mobile phone is thrown. Players compete against each other by seeking to throw their phones higher than others, often at the risk of damaging their phones."
My first phone was a RugGear RG930. If you think Nokia’s 3310 was built like a brick, then this thing may as well have been a rubberised titanium brick.
It was so solid I used to play ‘catch the phone’ with friends, and it ended up face down on concrete more times than I can count, but I don’t think it ever sustained so much as a scratch.
If the RG930 ran Android, I reckon I could go for the high score.
I had a rugged android phone from Blackview that was deemed to survive terrible stuff...I managed to drop it into the ocean.
Bought another one for my significant other after changing the screen of her samsung smartphone 3 times. She has used it for more than a year, it slipped from her jacket once from my motorbike. Someone found it 1h later in the middle of a roundabout face down with tire marks on the case. He saw it only because I was calling it and it has some notification lights at the back. Not a single scratch on the screen! Her only complaints is the quality of the photos taken with the camera.
I wish they were supported by alternative roms like lineageos or /e/os.
A colleague showed me their Caterpillar-branded phone, it was proper ruggedized like you see in construction radios and the like, big bumpers, plastic screen, he casually yote it onto the floor to demonstrate. Mainly so he can pass it to his kids if they're bored.
The current generation Cat branded phones look pretty regular, but are probably still much more rugged than most phones.
When I lived in Sierra Leone circa 2012, a lot of expats had phones like this. Ruggedized, could handle anything - dust, falling into a silty river, anything. Many a game of catch were played with them.
Also iAlertU. It used the sudden motion sensor to make a loud noise like a car alarm. The fun part was that you could use the remote to turn it off and that kept up with the theme.
Postmodern decadence. Funny, yes. But more akin to slaves fighting in an arena. Yes, I know, machines have no feelings (yet), but it still seems excessive.
I had some smartphone, I think a Motorola, with a plastic screen instead of glass. Never shattered on me, but took scratches very easily. I think it may have died when it was dropped in a toilet? IDK, been a while, I think it was before nearly universal IPS waterproofing on phones.
Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson had a subplot where a main character used morse code on his keyboard, or some other layered encoding on top of the keyboard, to write software and communicate surreptitiously even while his screen was being recorded.
Specifically, IIRC, the character used the "Scroll Lock" LED to blink out some coordinates in Morse, to avoid the location being displayed on-screen and thus captured by Van Eck phreaking[0].
… and, for input, tapped out Morse code on the space bar while viewing man pages so it looked like the character was just paging through documentation.
It is a story of technology and history. It grew out of the author's interest in the way we communicate, and also out of his interest in WWII legends. It's huge, and hugely readable. It's a very good read if the intersection of those things interest you.
A lot of my guy friends have a crush on a lead character in it (not Elias or Elon, but a similar name?) and praise it extensively. I apparently read it one time and remember nothing about it, so YMMV but if you’re into hacker guys, you’ll apparently love it!
I have read and can recommend everything by the author between and not including 'The Big U' and 'REAMDE'.
REAMDE disappointed me so much, that I haven't touched his later novels.
'Snow Crash' reads like a graphic novel, 'Anathem' is just unique and maybe in my fav top 10 (not considering 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' :), 'Cryptonomicon' + 'The Baroque Cycle' are slow but very rewarding.
'The Diamond Age', what can I say, do yourself a favour and start reading it now.
There is a video of a guy shouting into a can which was changing the pressure of a piezo ... I think they picked it up in the shack but didn't mess with it much more. Completely passive I think.
This reminds me of that section in the book Cryptonomicon, where our hero is programming on a laptop that he knows is being spied upon using Tempest and probably more, and is using clandestine input via morse code on the shift (?) key. I really enjoyed that book.
I thought Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir had a similar "feel", though it's more future-looking rather than past looking.
Daemon and Freedom(tm) by Daniel Suarez is another book (printed as two books, because reasons) that is ~1K pages but I've read 3 times (like Cryptonomicon).
Others in this thread have recommended The Baroque Cycle, but I just couldn't get into it. Ditto with Anathem. Maybe I should give them another try. However, I do love Diamond Age and Snowcrash.
On this topic, my Dell laptop detects that it's closed by having 1 (!) magnet in the screen, and a sensor on the case. So when I put my magsafe phone to the right of the touchpad, it thinks I've closed it and logs me out.
My MacBook has 2 magnets in the screen to avoid this issue.
It would be slighly more useful to have something that uses the microphone to detect when you physicially tap the laptop e.g. with your finger, it could be used to keep typing even with your laptop screen down, imagine a spy movie where the baddies close your laptop and put a gun against your head and you have to put your hands in the air, but you use your knee under the table to tap type "shred -vzn 0 /dev/xxx", poof, all data gone.
So, I had to see where it was from, if anywhere else (Amazon.com):
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. This exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
You are a liberal arts major at an American university in the first half of the first decade of this century. At every house party you attend, you see a copy of this book on every coffee table. You are aware that it is critically acclaimed and you participate in numerous conversations regarding its merits (or lack thereof). You have never read the book. You regret nothing.
I use the horn for this. For example, if someone cuts in front of me, I use Morse code to communicate the phrase "I am attempting to exercise empathy by putting myself in your shoes, and to be maximally charitable I am assuming that you're probably in a hurry, quite likely for a very good reason, such as perhaps your wife is going into labor, or you're running late for a big meeting, or your father in on his deathbed and you need to say goodbye to him for the last time, so I don't begrudge you for cutting me off, quite the contrary in fact, I wish you the best on your journey through life."
They then often use their horn to communicate something back to me, but sadly I'm not yet good enough at decoding Morse code to understand what they're trying to say.
Readit News
"developed by Carrot Pop which measures the vertical distance that a mobile phone is thrown. Players compete against each other by seeking to throw their phones higher than others, often at the risk of damaging their phones."
It was so solid I used to play ‘catch the phone’ with friends, and it ended up face down on concrete more times than I can count, but I don’t think it ever sustained so much as a scratch.
If the RG930 ran Android, I reckon I could go for the high score.
Bought another one for my significant other after changing the screen of her samsung smartphone 3 times. She has used it for more than a year, it slipped from her jacket once from my motorbike. Someone found it 1h later in the middle of a roundabout face down with tire marks on the case. He saw it only because I was calling it and it has some notification lights at the back. Not a single scratch on the screen! Her only complaints is the quality of the photos taken with the camera.
I wish they were supported by alternative roms like lineageos or /e/os.
The current generation Cat branded phones look pretty regular, but are probably still much more rugged than most phones.
A way to switch virtual desktops on macbooks with a hard drive by slapping them on the side.
"This update broke my workflow! Just add an option to reenable HDD smacking."
https://xkcd.com/1172
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4XZpU1zzWs&pp=ygUHaWFsZXJ0d...
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking
Nowadays 99% of laptops don't have those LEDs.
I think it's still a great story. The technology is definitely dated.
There is also some language that will offend or make some people uncomfortable (Racial slurs epithets, among them).
There are plenty of people I wouldn't recommend it to, though.
REAMDE disappointed me so much, that I haven't touched his later novels.
'Snow Crash' reads like a graphic novel, 'Anathem' is just unique and maybe in my fav top 10 (not considering 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' :), 'Cryptonomicon' + 'The Baroque Cycle' are slow but very rewarding.
'The Diamond Age', what can I say, do yourself a favour and start reading it now.
Sure I forgot one or two, it's been a long time.
Edit: seems I'm misremembering, just read - https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/3aknvw/pris... the LED was to output data, but they used another key to tap code
Disabling Windows accessibility features is an indication of anti-social behavior.
It would follow from your statement that not disabling the screen lock is also anti-social.
I didn't like Snowcrash nearly as much.
His Diamond Age is pretty good, too.
Daemon and Freedom(tm) by Daniel Suarez is another book (printed as two books, because reasons) that is ~1K pages but I've read 3 times (like Cryptonomicon).
Others in this thread have recommended The Baroque Cycle, but I just couldn't get into it. Ditto with Anathem. Maybe I should give them another try. However, I do love Diamond Age and Snowcrash.
My MacBook has 2 magnets in the screen to avoid this issue.
So, I had to see where it was from, if anywhere else (Amazon.com):
They then often use their horn to communicate something back to me, but sadly I'm not yet good enough at decoding Morse code to understand what they're trying to say.