- I still can’t believe they switched to Calibri at all; the only people who should be using Calibri are people who don’t realize that Microsoft Word lets you pick other fonts.
I do wish they’d gone for a classier serif though; Garamond was right there.
- Wow, uh, it’s kind of astounding how poorly Eric is reading the room there.
A weird disposable(!) voice recorder ring seems to go against pretty much all of the “open and repairable” image that the Pebble brand has been cultivating.
This product should probably have been “Core” branded and kept on a different website entirely. Its very existence seems kind of toxic to the Pebble brand, IMO.
- The AI integration in question, from the Calibre changelog:
- Allow asking AI questions about any book in your calibre library.
- Right click the "View" button and choose "Discuss selected book(s) with AI"
- AI: Allow asking AI what book to read next by right clicking on a book and using the "Similar books" menu
- AI: Add a new backend for "LM Studio" which allows running various AI models locally
It seems pretty harmless really.
I understand some people feel that AI is overhyped and don't particularly like it, but this level of weird knee-jerk "anything AI is the devil incarnate" response is just as ridiculous, IMO.
- Having also lurked in their Discord, I think your analysis is pretty much spot-on!
- Agreed -- if someone outright accuses you of lying and stealing, posting evidence against those allegations seems completely reasonable to me.
- Both of those comments seem to just boil down to "Core probably could be more proactive about comms", which hardly seems like a particularly egregious sin.
- It seems like Rebble (the board) really overplayed their hand.
From what they posted, it seems like they wanted more control over what Core was doing, deciding that the best way to do that was to try and hold the app store data hostage.
Now, with the Core app open sourced and multiple app store repos supported, Rebble's position will likely be greatly diminished from what it could have been if they had been satisfied with what they had. I guess in the end though, the outcome was a net win for everyone (fully open source apps), so it works out.
- Definitely agree that this is the best outcome for everyone! In particular, with multiple repo support, I'm hoping this can open the door for some kind of "F-Droid for Pebble" with automated builds from source repos. So many Pebble apps are open source anyway I think it would be a good fit.
- I think the real issue is simply that the definition of ASD has been expanded to the point of near-meaninglessness. If we're applying the same label to:
1. Someone who is totally nonverbal and effectively unable to function in society
2. Someone who is kind of socially awkward
...then maybe it's time to come up with a new labeling system. ("Autism" in the context of vaccines usually is implicitly referring exclusively to [1])
- Agreed -- While I admire their work in keeping the lights on, Rebble doesn't necessarily make sense in a world where the "real" Pebble company has returned.
Keep in mind that this is their goal statement (straight from their FAQ):
> Our goal is to maintain and advance Pebble functionality, in the absence of Pebble Technology Corp.
Eric's new company, by effectively re-creating Pebble Technology Corp, is an existential threat to that mission: If there is someone else maintaining and advancing Pebble functionality, then what is the purpose of Rebble? It does seem unfortunate though -- I hope they can all work something out.
- I'm still disappointed that they got rid of Direct File, such a promising start...
- Solid article! One other change in Snow Leopard that the article doesn't mention: it replaced the classic Exposé with a boring grid-based version on that looked like a cheap knockoff.
Thankfully, the next release (Lion) brought back the old layout algorithm.
- The last mile problem is only a problem because of poor layout. Build homes and work near transit nodes (instead of in the middle of nowhere) and there isn't a problem in the first place.
> Problems like traffic waves and gridlock go away when all cars are driving themselves.
How would that make those problems go away? It could probably slightly alleviate them in marginal cases, but any given road has a finite throughput limitation, and once it is reached, it wouldn't matter even if every robo-driver were perfectly synchronized.
- Agreed, and I feel like the right answer might be to treat it exactly like cigarettes. For example:
1. Ban in most places except very specific ones. E.g., "would you like to sit in the social media use section today?"
2. Make it extremely expensive to access and use. This would likely do wonders to cut down on use, just as it did for cigarettes.
- I just wish Unihertz wasn't so questionable! Can't a decent company make a small phone? (And actually update the software on it? And comply with the GPL?)
- Agreed -- this requirement feels less like an actually useful requirement and more a silly and performative one, which is trying to make some kind of commentary on AI use as a whole.
- You'd be surprised how many of the old devs are coming out of the woodwork to fix their old watchfaces and apps. It seems like a lot of people who were excited enough about Pebble in the past to develop apps seem to still be excited about it.
Plus, it's not particularly difficult to support the bigger screen size in the SDK.
Local based AI features are great and I wish they were used more often, instead of just offloading everything to cloud services with questionable privacy.