If you want something like this with asymmetric encryption, a qwerty keyboard, mesh range extension, and a GUI, try a T-Deck running Meshtastic.

Reminds me of a side project I did when first starting CS! The Java byte code specification is absolutely approachable and if you've never looked at it before I recommend it (although this project says you can still use it without that knowledge)

Former solar researcher here, had the same experience.

I'll summarize it like this:

- join one of the most prestigious laboratories for my master's thesis in the world

- be assigned work based on a paper published in the same lab by a previous researcher

- can't replicate the results for s*t for months, put in insane overtime hours getting ridiculously good at all the processes, still nothing

- randomly talk about my issues with a random phd in the lab (great scientist with tens of thousands of citations) which quickly scans the data and notes that the voltage obtained by the system in the publication is literally impossible, but by raising the voltage you can easily fake out the amount of electricity generated by the system. Nobody really caught it before because you need some very intimate experience with those systems, and it's just one random (albeit important) point.

- ask why this happens

- she explains that only high impact numbers get citations, only citations get you a chance to progress in the academia pyramid

- she explains that only professors that run labs with a huge number of citations can find good funding

- only good funding can allow you to get the material, equipment and countless number of bodies (phds) to run as many experiments as possible and thus grow your position in the scientific world

Essentially there's way too many incentives to cheat and ignore the cheating for all the people involved.

And due to the fact that as soon as you enter a niche (and literally everything is a niche in science) everybody knows each other toxic things happen all around.

I wanted to be a researcher, but having wasted ultimately 7 months of my life trying to get numbers that were impossible to get, and having understood it was ALL about money (no funds -> no researchers/equipment -> papers -> citations -> funds) and politics I called it quits.

I don't know how to fix it other than several governments and their education ministries making a joined effort to have scientific papers where each result has to be thoroughly reviewed by multiple other labs. It's expensive, but I don't see other ways.

Oh man, I had no idea that the decision of whether to rent or buy skis required calculus to solve. I just figured that if you ski more than say, 3 times a season, it's probably better to own your own gear for reasons unrelated to the entry cost, but more to do with comfort, tuning, quality, and so on. Anyone who has rented skis knows that the rental fleets are trashed.

It’s also worth noting that diamonds for jewelry have very little to no used market value or appreciation. Natural diamonds might be worth the premium if they could be a store of value like gold, but that isn’t the case. I think that is a clue to the absence of a fair market dynamic.

> Another theory is that a perfectly-absorbing leaf would somehow absorb too much energy and get overheated

If having both pigments means the plant would be close to black, overheating is an absolutely valid hypothesis imo, plants just like animals have optimal temperature metabolism and often getting too hot is deadly, while under optimal temperature is tolerable.

And the Russians. For some reasons everyone seems to forget that the invasion of Poland (and other East European countries) was a joint operation by Germany and Russia (not to diminish any atrocities etc. perpetuated by Germans).

Especially in this case, because the city was also called Danzig before and (after various owners over the centuries, mostly Polish [0]) was co-owned-German (free city, German leaning because of ethnicity) at the time of WW2. Destruction should then have been (haven't verified that) by the Red Army (again not to diminish any German war crimes - also [1]).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gda%C5%84sk

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Westerplatte

At AutoTempest we resisted making an app for years, because anything that a hypothetical app could do, we could do with the website. And in my opinion, when searching for cars, it's more convenient to be in your browser where you can easily open new tabs, bookmark results, etc.

And for years, it was our most requested feature, by far. We had instructions for how to pin the site to your home screen, and would explain to users how the website does everything an app can do. Still, constant requests for an app. Finally we relented and released one, and very quickly around half our mobile traffic moved to the app without us really trying to nudge people at all.

People just really like apps! I think it suits our mental model of different tools for different uses. We've also found that app users are much more engaged than website users, but of course much of that will be selection bias. Still, I can see how having your app on someone's home screen could provide a significant boost to retention, compared to a website they're liable to forget. For us now, that's the main benefit we see. Certainly don't use any additional data, though I won't argue that other companies don't.