Google's aborted Ara phone was supposed to launch with an aquarium module full of wriggling tardigrades

[anon55609254]

@stinkinbadgers

See, this is why we shouldn’t take life so seriously. I always suspected our universe was just an attachment to some douchebag’s cellphone one level up.

Post of the week!

[coherent_light]

Yes, this.

I’m going to grow some Triops here in a few days (after our art show is launched and that grant is all applied for).

[timmh]

Please, it’s a DIY culture now! http://www.baertierchen.de/wb_dez02.html

[Nightflyer]

Nope. I felt guilty enough when my tamagochi died. (Don’t look at me that way, it was a gift.) There’s no way I’d want an mini-aquarium hooked up to my phone. Nope nope nope.

[stumo]

I used to work for Symbian, which did great smart phones for its time. The big issue with open sourcing phones is that the way the radios behave is quite tightly regulated - rightly so, you don’t want a hobbyist knocking out your phone signal. You also need pretty careful coding to get decent battery life - if possible you turn off half the ram chips, and use a lower power processor for things that are slower. One rogue process would kill the battery. So you need much tighter code quality control than you’d have on your average open source project.

That said all my knowledge is 10 years out of date

[popobawa4u]

@gilgongo

After running tests in the UK and Italy with various demographics, we came to the conclusion that people who buy mobile phones were more interested in what the phone looked like than its specs or functions - by a wide margin.

I don’t doubt it! I have always found cell phone design to be somewhat backwards. My intuition is that the best phone UI is exclusively auditory, rendering the phone itself invisible. Instead there is a glut of luminescent “fidget slabs”.

[nimelennar]

@popobawa4u

My intuition is that the best phone UI is exclusively auditory, rendering the phone itself invisible.

My car has a Bluetooth interface. The entire visible “phone” is three buttons on the steering wheel, and the rest of the interface is auditory.

The problem is, it can’t reliably interpret such complicated instructions as “Call Mom at home,” even when spoken slowly and articulately, and even after training the system to my voice.

Auditory interfaces are an excellent idea that no one has yet managed to implement well enough to completely replace a visual/tactile interface.

[mike.jane]

[quote=“Blaze_Curry, post:12, topic:95835”]
anything involving lasers!;
[/quote] (emphasis added)

like the way you’re thinking

[redesigned]

@ficuswhisperer

I wonder what PETA would think of this.

That is is cruel to lock living things in such a small cell?

@enso

I was just pondering, last night in the hot tub, the complete failure of open source OS’s on phones

It is an interesting thing to ponder. especially if you have a hot tub.

Capitalism is the easy answer. There was a virtual arms race and cross compiled apps wasn’t that mature of a thing, and phone manufacturers were less likely to release tinkerers devices so it has mainly stayed a two horse race so far.

Both prevalent mobile OS do have open source members in their family tree, which seems to indicate that there is great possibilities if the market is willing to pursue. mobile ubuntu and firefox os were both okay to play with, but if one is going to deal with the few issues that still needed ironing out in each, there would need to be some sort of compelling reason to switch, which never materialized, for me anyway.

[enso]

@redesigned

mobile ubuntu and firefox os were both okay to play with, but if one is going to deal with the few issues that still needed ironing out in each, there would need to be some sort of compelling reason to switch, which never materialized, for me anyway.

FirefoxOS is deader than Jesus. Seriously. Like Mozilla laid off and/or reallocated all the people who worked on it.

[anon33466019]

@enso

deader than Jesus

Hay, Jesus lives in my heart! Likely next to some parasites I should get looked at!

[redesigned]

@enso

FirefoxOS is deader than Jesus. Seriously. Like Mozilla laid off and/or reallocated all the people who worked on it.

yeah, i was sad when i saw that. more because i liked the ideas behind the effort rather than the initial product produced, but i’m sure that it would have improved and evolved if it had been given the chance.

personally, i’d love to see more of these alternative OS on tablets rather than phones, but i understand why they choose phones.

also, it isn’t just the open source efforts that have been shuffled aside, just ask RIM, or Palm (WebOS), or Microsoft, or the previous phone giants. apple and google really changed the market quickly, as that market matures a bit more we’ll see more opportunity for other parties/players.

[redesigned]

@japhroaig

Hay, Jesus lives in my heart!

A tenant that charges you 10% and makes all the rules, what more could you want?

I mean the water to wine thing seems like it will be great until you see the tiny size of his wine cups, and the crackers don’t even have any cheese on them.

[anon33466019]

Wine, cheese, crackers, and exclamations of, “Jesus!!”. Sounds like one of my cocktail parties.

[dave_b]

In my phone well now I know.

[coherent_light]

@popobawa4u

My intuition is that the best phone UI is exclusively auditory, rendering the phone itself invisible.

I don’t think this works too well for folk like me. I prefer the phone to vibrate so I can feel it or see that there’s a call coming in.

I’m not deaf, but I do put on headphones in order to block out the world while I’m working.

[ficuswhisperer]

@enso

FirefoxOS is deader than Jesus.

I guess we all better watch out if they start working on it again.

[enso]

I work there. It ain’t coming back.

[ficuswhisperer]

That’s what they said about Jesus.

[anon35121463]

@ficuswhisperer

That’s what they said about Jesus.

Jesus worked for Firefox? No bloody wonder the damned thing keeps dieing and resurrecting on me then.