The most striking incongruity with our modern era to me is that the family was all outside when the blast occurred. With pervasive screens, we just don't get outside like we used to.

And why on earth was that dad mowing when the house was able to take care of it?

To be alone for an hour.

this guy gets it

That's one of the usual failures of science fiction: most authors imagine technological progress, but don't also predict what societal changes it might bring. So this family had a quaint picture-book suburban 1950s life, just with robots. Same as Asimov's Detective Baley smoked a pipe and had a traditional 1950s marriage with a stay-at-home wife - just with robots...

I think you have to distinguish what the author can imagine and what the audience could likely accept. Part of writing stories is engaging the readers, who have biases of their own.

The usual response here is, any author can predict the horseless carriage, only a true visionary will predict the traffic jam and road rage.

I don't know that it because Bradbury couldn't predict the changes. See The Veldt for example. It is more that painting an idyllic 1950's life cast a sharper contrast with the destruction and thus had stronger impact.

> Same as Asimov's Detective Baley smoked a pipe and had a traditional 1950s marriage with a stay-at-home wife - just with robots..

How do you know that will not happen in the future?

A hugely different society might look more like past than the present.

Vaping brought smoking back and pipe smoking is trending back upwards for the first time in decades. New bars where people can smoke cigars and pipes have shown up in my city again after a recent push to get a dedicated ABC license for that.

Trends are sometimes cyclical. (Not to be light about lung cancer being a trend, of course. I don't get why smoking is back. I'm just pointing out that it is back in the 2020s.)

They don't even predict all the technological changes. I love how in William Gibson's Neuromancer they have VR, true AI, and even fancy orbital resorts, but not mobile phones!

If you can climb inside the sensorium of a hot assassin and feel it in your mind when she pinches her nipple, what is the point of an iPhone?

The people in that world moved pretty far beyond cellphones in a couple hundred years, and that’s okay. I’m sure you’ve noticed there aren’t a lot of phone booths around anymore…

True, but in the Neuromancer universe they still have public pay phones and at one point the main AI keeps ringing the phones to get the main character to answer as there doesn't seem to be any other way for it to contact someone when they aren't jacked in to cyberspace.

The things we enjoy doing, we prefer to do ourselves. For example: coding.

Man, if only I wasn't so burnt out. I've still been day-dreaming about architecture and design for my side-projects. I haven't had a chance to sit down and get into the flow state like I used to.

To smell fresh cut grass. It can be quite enjoyable.

I've got a neighbor who I'm pretty sure would still be out there.

Mine would be... at 8:30pm... on a Sunday... running the Dixie Chopper.

This sounds so interesting.

Are there other all-in-one platforms?

It reminds me a little of Citadel/UX (https://citadel.org) or software for the Reticulum Network (https://reticulum.network/manual/gettingstartedfast.html#nom...).

Freenet has a similar vibe.

I'm building a greenhouse. The frame is done, and I've got plastic and a door on it. Next, I'd like to build boxes to hold soil and allow for easy watering.

Cool! You should consider aquaponics

https://github.com/fhk/plantz

Got any progress photos?

This sounds so nice!

Sounds cool. Care to share the design?

I build a computer app to make it easier to do projector sewing. This allows you to take a PDF sewing pattern and use a projector (often mounted on a ceiling, shining down on a cutting mat) to see that pattern at life size. You can then easily cut it out and sew it together.

My app is called Project&Cut and can be found at https://projectandcut.com.

Sounds interesting! I have a projector I use for tracing art, never imagined it could be used for sewing too. Good luck!

Thank you.

I do think it has uses beyond sewing; enlarging art, for example, or perhaps painting stage backgrounds, or maybe laying out patterns for building something out of wood.

This is interesting as I've been working on localisation for an app I've made. It's in Electron. I find it super frustrating that when I ask for `navigator.languages` I get 'en-US' first, even though I have my language set to 'en-CA' (which showed up second, I think). I can only assume they were working around some dumb web software that didn't realise that if it didn't see your specific language code it should fall back to a more generic language. Anyone got tips for getting the most specific language code in the general case?

I've only tried Valentina/Seamly2D but yes, most of these programs let you export your design as a pattern that can be constructed, typically as a PDF.

Once you have a PDF, you can: 1 - print it in poster format across many pages of paper 2 - use a projector aimed down onto your cutting surface and then cut the pieces out or 3 - a few people are fortunate enough to use laser cutters to cut out their fabric.

Speaking more on point 2, projector sewing got way easier this year with the release of automatic calibration software, namely https://projectandcut.com and https://www.patternprojector.com. (The first one is my project). If you want to learn more about it, you might also look at Projectors for Sewing facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/481078582801085) or https://projectorsewing.com or search google or YouTube.

You really can be set up for $100. I also think this could work with some forms of woodworking, or, say, crafting foam armour or decorating cakes.

Take a look at Snap. It was originally a scratch mod, but does allows for all sorts of advanced things. https://snap.berkeley.edu

Yes, snap is great. Unfortunately it's far more daunting than Scratch, if only just in the number of blocks and the way they are presented, using a smaller font, etc, so it's not so good for younger kids just starting out.

But it works as a next step for sure.

Next step is usually into regular code. We stepped into Godot, in our case. After working with scratch on one serious project you realize its limitations and their associated pains. And moving to regular programming language relieves most of this.

That's one thing scratch really needs: a quick way to switch back and forth between "visual" programming and text based programming.

I've got an Electron app in the works which I'm planning to sell to Windows and Mac users (probably through the platform's app stores, using in-app purchases).

Is such a thing possible with the Linux market? Can I sell my software through stores? Is IAP a thing?

I liked "Signal: Understanding What Matters in a World of Noise" by Stephen Few.

Do take a look at the results from the citizen scientists doing a potato diet study, and now a "half-tato" diet: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/03/13/half-tato-diet-comm...