Category: Thoughts

  • Google vs Samsung, Nexus Edition

    Excellent Ars Technica article: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary. I’m reading this the day after I ordered a Nexus 5. Not that it would have made much of a difference… but still a very interesting read. Besides, it made me change my mind on some aspects I already…

  • Switching To Laptop-only

    Since 2009 my home computer has been a i7-powered desktop behemoth: Intel i7-920 12 GB DDR3 RAM (triple channel) 2x WD Velociraptor, configured in RAID0 for system and programs 2x some other random HDDs configured in RAID1 for data NVIDIA GTX 275. A couple years ago I recovered a second screen, identical to my previous…

  • Open Source Has Changed, And For Good

    Since when ScrewTurn Wiki was half-assedly discontinued, I’m mostly an observer/user when it comes to open source. Excluding random code open-sourced by individual developers, I can clearly see 3 patterns emerging from companies producing open source software. With companies I mean entities that actually pay developers to build software. I’m not getting into licenses and…

  • FeedBurner Is Dead, And Here’s Why

    We all know Google Reader was shut down at the beginning of July. Users at first panicked. Then they (we) pleaded Google to keep Reader open. We failed. Life went on. Some users simply stopped using feed readers altogether, but I think that’s a minority. Others switched to another product. Personally I find Feedbin +…

  • Penny Pinching Online Music

    We’ve had Spotify for a while, which was, and under some aspects still is, very innovative. We have iTunes Radio, Pandora, Last.fm. We have borderline-legal services like Grooveshark. In other words, if you want to listen to music, you’ll probably find something free, or very close to free, especially if you live in the US.…