The worst part is that Nextcloud isn’t even really in competition with Google. Setting up a Nextcloud server isn’t hard, but it’s not a trivial task. Sharing it outside your local network also requires a bit of skill, especially if done securely. That is to say, Nextcloud users probably tend to be more tech-savvy.

That’s only true for those who self-host this. There are lots of companies offering Nextcloud hosting. That’s probably why Google doesn’t like Nextcloud. I’m not saying Google is right. Actually what Google is doing here is quite pathetic.

Same with GrapheneOS.

Sure, I’m not saying this never happens, but I’d argue this is the exception not the rule. Especially when it comes to DDR5 which is still quite new, so there should not be that many laptops with dead batteries with such memory around yet. It would be a different story with DDR4, not that I would suggest that they use DDR4. And the SSD form factor they used isn’t very common, so it is probably even less likely that people have such SSDs lying around. I still appreciate that they allow me to buy the machine without memory/storage.

The point of the DIY edition is that you could just reuse some old RAM or SSDs.

In theory, yes. I don’t think it is very likely that people have DDR5 SO-DIMM modules lying around, let alone 2230 SSDs. I don’t understand why they weren’t able to go for the way more common 2280 form factor for the SSD at least.

I’m not sure why you think manufactuers of SoCs (or entire phones) - which aren’t used by Google directly (as in: used by Google in their own products or sold by Google as their own product) - provide drivers to Google. They don’t, because there is no point in doing that. This is not how the Android eco-system works or the business of selling those SoCs for that matter.

SoC manufactuers sell their SoCs to companies who want to build Android phones (or they build their own like Samsung). With those SoCs they provide a BSP (board support package) that includes all the bits needed to bring up a system running on that partricular SoC. Google has pretty much nothing to do with this, except that Google recommends a certain Linux kernel version (with a bunch of Android-specific patches) for a given Android version, which SoC makers often (but not always) use as the base for their customized kernels.

It is not like Google provides the operating system including all device specific drivers to the device manufacturers. They don’t care about that at all. They provide AOSP (which is open source, so anyone can get that) as well as their proprietary stuff like Google Play etc. That’s pretty much it.

There is a lot not to like about many Android phones (or rather smartphones in general), when it comes to their openness in regards to software. And it is perfectly fine to criticize those involved, but you should direct your criticism at the correct parties. Google isn’t the bad guy in this instance.

You are talking about phones made by Google. I am talking about ALL the phones using Android and how difficult or sometimes impossible it is to use anything but Android.

That’s not what you were saying. You were explicitly talking about Google. Also, implying it is Google’s fault that other manufacturers don’t let you install other operating systems easily is pretty bizarre. If you want to complain about that, at least complain about the right companies. Those are usually the phone manufacturers and/or the SoC manufacturers. The SoC manufacturers often times are particularily problematic, since they often do not publish open source drivers at all or in a very limited fashion.

No, unlock as in: You can install whatever operating system you want. No need for “jailbreaking” on Google phones. They officially support unlocking the bootloader (and re-locking it later as well!). There are many things not to like about Google, but how they handle their phones when it comes to openness is certainly not one of them. Pretty much all other phone vendors are much worse than that (except for maybe a few small ones like Fairphone).

How about not letting Google have exclusive rights to the drivers for all the phone hardware?

What exactly do you mean by that? Google is one of the few companies that let you easily unlock their phones so you can do whatever you want with them.

Yeah, Bonzi Buddy!

There is also AMD and they are doing pretty well. I wouldn’t write off x86 just yet. But less competition is never a good thing, and Broadcom buying another company has never resulted in anything good, as far as I can tell. For anyone except Broadcom themselves.

It is, but Signal and Matrix aren’t really all that similar. Matrix’s privacy is pretty atrocious. It stores tons of meta data about users all over the place. That’s the exact opposite of what Signal does.

Ugh, Broadcom buying Intel would be terrible.

You need sampling at twice the frequency as a minimum to extract a time domain signal into the frequency domain. It says nothing about “perfect” especially when you’re listening in the time domain.

Yes it does. You can use a higher frequency, but that does not change anything except increase the maxiumum frequency possible. Even with perfect ears and the best equipment, there is no audible (and mathematical) difference to be had.

Everyone who claims otherwise should watch Monty’s explainer videos. I know they are quite old at this point, but everything he explains is still perfectly valid. If that does not convince you, nothing will.

It turns out that dynamic range is limited by the audio sampling rate and the human ear can easily detect a far greater range CD audio supports.

Dynamic range isn’t limited by the sampling rate. It is limited by the resolution, which is 16 bits for the audio CD. With that resolution you get a dynamic range of 96 dB when not using any dithering and even more than that when using dithering. Even with “only” 96 dB that dynamic range is so vast, that there is no practical use of a higher resolution when it comes to playback. I know that the human ear is supposed to be able to handle 130 dB or even more of dynamic range. The thing is, you can only experience such a dynamic range once, afterwards you are deaf. So not much point in such a dynamic range there.

There are good reasons to use a higher resolution when recording and mixing audio, but for playback and storage of the finished audio 16 bits of resolution is just fine.

Stunts (a.k.a 4D Sports Driving) [1990] - PC, Amiga and others

WTF?

When hosting this locally, I don’t see how 200 GB is much of an issue. Storage is so cheap these days, if you want to host it locally, just buy a 256 GB SSD just for that data for $20. Anyway, you were asking for a mirror, to which I replied with the information about the ZIM files. I don’t really understand the issue. Stackoverflow just isn’t that small, there is not much you can do about that.

I think it’d take a few hours to setup even a smaller copy of SO, which isn’t ideal for answering a quick question.

The download? Maybe, depends on your Internet connection’s speed. Actually serving it as a website certainly doesn’t take hours. It is rather a matter of seconds.

Of course they aren’t small, but they are probably as small as it gets, since they are pretty efficiently compressed. I am not sure what you mean by

it’s not a straightforward operation for even the average developer or systems engineer to restore these into a working format

since it is really trivial to use them. Just load them with Kiwix and serve them as a website. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

You can download pretty much all of stackoverflow as ZIM files for self-hosting.

Yes, there is not much going on on this board, but since those trigger boards with USB-PD functionality are so cheap these days, it should have been possible to add such a trigger chip. If you wanted to go the really fancy route you could even use PPS and allow for pretty much arbitrary voltages.