This probably signals the beginning of the end for OpenAI. Eventually all of the AI chatbots will have Ads at least on the free and low-cost tiers. But there's a strong incentive not to begin enshitification until the number of competitors has dwindled, and an oligarchy has been established. Google, Meta et al. can afford to lose money on AI for a long time, because they have real revenue from other business products; they can stay Ad free until the small-fry go bust.
Also, if your Android phone is a Pixel, you can run the recently added Terminal app, which runs a plain vanilla Debian distribution within a VM. So you then have a pocketable Linux machine to develop code on. Not only does Python run on it, you can install the entire Anaconda Python suite.
I tried this a while back with. NET and Blazor. With split screen I was able to add some code and preview live in the browser and build and 'install' a simple pwa.
Presumably with an external monitor and the desktop mode it would be better.
Code from tiny llms such as Gemma are a waste of time but it "worked". It was neat to generate a working app completely offline.
The main problem was that the VM crashed on my pixel fairly frequently. Might be better by now.
Because, wonderful as Termux is, it has a very nonstandard filesystem layout, so installation scripts for something like Anaconda will not run without extensive modifications. And Termux has no access to /proc, /dev etc., so lots of utilities fail. Since Terminal provides a full Linux VM, all programs that will run on Linux just work as expected.
I haven't noticed anything like that. Some more obscure tools have trouble with the file system but that happens in ordinary Linux too. Though I have no experience with Anaconda specifically so you likely know better whether it'll need adaptations to work under Termux.
I run htop just fine on my handhelds and I'm pretty sure it sources directly from /proc, /sys or something.
Termux can access the full file system if you have root access, which is how I play around with it; however, running a VM is a safer and easier route, especially as smartphone manufacturers are making it tougher to root the device you own.
Wow, that’s cool! I wonder whether one day Apple is going to allow something like this with headless “macOS” VM on iPadOS to make it a viable local development platform.
They can't put you in jail, but they will often happily sell your data to the government so that they can put you in jail [1], and by holding the data they are now open to subpoenas anyway.
Additionally, making surveillance by corporations the norm they've eroded everybody's reasonable expectation of privacy, which is the standard by which U.S. courts judge if surveillance has gone too far. Now that we're all used to this level of corporate surveillance we won't blink when the government does it too.
IOW if corporations weren't hoarding this data governments would have a much harder time securing it.
Yes, but all problems with tainted food are not as visually obvious as mold. After some bad surprises, I've decided to never eat anything I ordered from Amazon.
The current situation on Google's Android Pixel phones is odd. The old non-LLM Google Assistant works well in a limited domain: Things like setting alarms, phoning by name, etc. It's similar in scope to Siri, but with better voice recognition, and better context awareness. However, Google is desperate to kill Google Assistant and force all Pixel users to use Gemini instead. Gemini 3 is a very good LLM, and far, far, far more versatile than Google Assistant. But Gemini won't do the simple things as reliably as the old Assistant. Setting an alarm works maybe 90% of the time with Gemini. If you asked the old Assistant "What time is it?" it would respond "It's 4:40 PM". If you ask Gemini "What time is it?" it will sometimes respond "It's 4:40 PM CDT in {your city}", but sometimes it will say "It's four four zero Pee Em in {your city}" and sometimes it will do a web search. Results are spotty in other areas like voice dialing. I've retained the old Assistant, because I want to do the basic things far more often than I want to verbally vibe code. But rumor has it Google is going to disable the old Assistant in March, forcing all users onto Gemini for voice commands. Unless Gemini gets much better at handling simple tasks by then, Pixel users will end up with a voice assistant much more frustrating than Siri.
Not to mention all the useless LLM fluff Gemini has. I turned off Gemini because simple questions like "What's 1 USD in AUD" would be met with 30 seconds of "As a large language model, I can't provide investment advice, so it's always important to check information yourself [...], but one Australian dollar is approximately $0.65" (note the conversion in the wrong direction). By comparison, Google Assistant just gives you a number straight away.
There is a third option (in addition to the native app and Termux) to get emacs running. The recently added (to at least Pixel phones) "Terminal" app runs a standard Debian distribution inside a VM. emacs can be installed there in exactly the same way it would be on any other Debian machine.
I'm sure grateful that you did that. I've been surprised by how little online discussion of this app I've seen. It's just extremely cool to be walking around with a real gnu/linux computer in my pocket, which cost nothing to add to the phone, and has no ads or in app purchases.
That tracks, it's a situation where most people are going to the same place so public transit has a huge advantage.
I am surprised that the bus wasn't already free; in my college town and the one near it (both had their own bus line), fares are free for all undergraduates.
My experience with bus service in college towns is that the routes between campus and student residential areas get heavy use, while the buses serving the rest of the town drive around nearly empty.
There was a time when I would have salivated over this. But now I can run iPython on my phone, and have numpy, sympi, scipy, astropy and countless other packages. Physical keyboards are great for calculators - much better than virtual keyboards on phones. But the keyboard advantage seems to me most valuable for quick calculations, not elaborate things like this calculator offers. If I'm going to do matrix calculations, I want to be able to put the data into a file with a real, and familiar, editor. I want to be able to grab tables of data from the web. If I make a plot, I want to be able to save it to a PNG file. I want a high resolution color display. A phone running iPython/Python seems much better to me, especially since almost everyone who would want to do what this calculator does already has a smartphone. Also, I can ssh into my phone and interact with it using my desktop computer's keyboard and monitor, eliminating the phone keyboard limitations when a full sized computer is nearby.
I don't really disagree with anything you've said, but I still feel a warm spot in my heart from projects like this. I still have (and use!) my HP48SX from my high school days, and it still works like it always has. There is something to be said for a device's limitations, and I mean that honestly. It's very powerful for what it is, but its processing limitations keeps me from overextending, which is something very easy to do with the pocket supercomputers we've all gotten used to carrying around over the previous decade. (And its keys are simply a delight to press compared to even the best glass touchscreen.)
Even with almost all of my work done on a computer, with Python, MATLAB, etc. available in a few keypresses, I still keep a calculator on hand. I haven't come across a desktop calculator (including direct 1:1 software recreations of classic calculators) that's quite as user-friendly and efficient as grabbing a scientific calculator off my desk and typing in there.
There are just some user interface advantages for me in having a physical calculator. The only thing stopping me from buying this is the price tag.
Same. Although I have a few physical calculators, I rarely use them, because although for a simple calculation they're faster, when I'm already at a computer/phone, using that is faster, and when I want to do anything involving programming an actual programming langugage is better.
True but a dedicated device has its own advantages (and disadvantages). Despite high availability I dislike spending too much time on my phone beside quick uses.
I use Android phones, and there are at least two ways to get iPython going on an Android phone.
The first is Termux, which provides a gnu userspace atop the Android kernel. This app is pretty old, and well-tested. There is an active and helpful Termux community. But it has some downsides: 1) The version of Termux in the Google Play Store is not the preferred and maintained version, although the Play Store version does work. The preferred version is in F-Droid, but the future of F-Droid itself is uncertain in the light of recent Google policy decisions. 2) Termux does not have access to directories such as /proc, /sys etc, which prevents some gnu/Linux utilities from working and 3) The Termux filesystem layout is very non-standard, so unless a program has been packaged explicitly for Termux, installation will probably be messy. I was able to get most, but not all of the Python packages I use frequently, to run within Termux. I could not get astropy to work, for example. Termux has nice usability features like pinch-to-zoom to change the font size. Termux requests a wakelock, and if you grant the wakelock then the OS will not throttle the app when your phone is locked.
The other option is the relatively recently added "terminal" app. terminal runs a plain-vanilla Debian Linux OS within a VM. Its file system is laid out exactly as you would expect, so if you want to get iPython and lots of libraries, you can just run the Anaconda Python installation script, and it will run unmodified with no errors. Nice! You can also install other nice desktop-style apps like VeraCrypt. There are a few downsides: 1) The OS will throttle the app, and occasionally kill the app, when the app is not actively being used interactively. 2) I have found no way to change the tiny font. 3) It's a Google app, so it might disappear for no good reason, as so many Google products do.
Both of these options work especially nicely on a foldable phone, because then the tiny phone keyboard is much less of an issue. A foldable phone plus the terminal app really is a pocket Linux computer.
It's actually not in the app store, and it may only be available on Pixel phones. You get the app not by downloading it from anywhere, you just enable "developer mode" in the system settings, and the app magically appears in your app menu (the full menu, not on any home screen by default). There is a subreddit dedicated to this app ( https://www.reddit.com/r/androidterminal/ ).
I've never used a Samsung phone, but I think their DeX environment might allow you to do the same things that the "terminal" app supplies.
If you can't get either of the above to work, give Termux a try. It's not full gnu/Linux, but it's pretty close.
A physical calculator is a tool, so is your python interpreter, but they are different tools for different purposes.
Mathematica does everything your python interpreter does and more — but that doesn't mean python becomes useless because of that. It's good for certain things, while Mathematica is good for other things.
Similarly with calculators (especially HP calculators), which have become a bit of a lost art (an elegant weapon for a more civilized age). I use them all the time when doing any kind of engineering or hobby work. Good luck using your computer with python one-handed in a workshop next to a CNC.
One thing I do agree with is that plotting functions or working with larger matrices on calculators makes little sense.
> If elon musk makes interstellar car that can reach the nearest star in 1 second and priced it at 1k, I guarantee within a year people will be bored of it and finding some angle to criticize it.
Americans were glued to their seats watching Apollo 11 land. Most were back to watching I Dream of Jeanie reruns when Apollo 17 touched down.
Well yes, but if this actually happened it would open up a new frontier. We'd have an entire galaxy of unspoilt ecosystems* to shit in. Climate anxiety would go from being existential dread to mere sentimental indignation, and everybody would be interested in the latest news from the various interstellar colonies and planning when to emigrate. Mental illness epidemics would clear up, politics would look like an old-fashioned activity, the global mood would lift, and people would say "global" much less often.
It always seems like whenever something close to this happens, people's lives carry on, don't get easier, and they keep finding new things to complain about.
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