Assuming you’re using the Garmin for fitness related reasons — are you really carrying your phone around with you for music? I guess it works if you bike?
I bought a series 11 with the esim option for this very reason and it just - doesnt - work. The airpod connection drops randomly, spotify stops working, navigation randomly stops working, the apple health app doesnt respect my other workout app, etc.
The plot thickens. Frankly even if it did get music right it would be tough to replace streaming my own Plex music library directly on my Apple watch. 100% worth paying for cellular.
The interface is terrible I've never actually remember to use spotify like this on my garmins and I've worn like 4 over the last decade. Maybe if you use it for a week straight it'll be muscle memory, but I only accidentally play music on it.
It can download and sync playlists and you connect bt headphones to it.
Last week I searched for a "Eufy S350" security camera on Amazon. Instead of search results, Alexa for Shopping took over the entire screen, proceeded to tell me that the Eufy S350 doesn't exist, and then recommended a Eufy vacuum cleaner.
This feels comical to me today, but I can imagine a near future where paid AI ads gaslit you into believing that the product you searched for is vastly inferior to the product AI "recommends".
I have an X4 as well and tried going down this path but it's just a bit too much friction for me to set my X4 to hotspot mode and run the calibre sync every time I want to refresh my feed.
Absolutely love the idea though. Just wish Crosspoint/X4 had the ability to schedule push/pull, but that would likely burn through the battery.
Same, I think there's too much friction yet. Maybe at some point it could become a crosspoint feature I hope!
EDIT: Just checking on the crosspoint site they say such thing is not planned: https://crosspointreader.com/roadmap (section Out of roadmap: Active connectivity (RSS, news, browsers))
My pleasure. I'm also unaware of a software or service since it seems a bit of a too specific usecase.
I'm doing all this (with no cost) using an AWS Lambda function written in Java which is scheduled to be called daily at 7 am. It basically parses some RSS feeds[1] (or parses html[2] when RSS is non-existent), extracts each article content using readability and packages them all in a daily epub[3] (with a TOC) which is stored in a S3 folder. Then a separate endpoint (the one I use in my X4) is taking most recent N S3 objects from that S3 folder and exposes the OPDS. The only downside of this is that the response time takes about 3 extra seconds since it uses a cold start, but response speed is not important to me.
Using 'OPDS as a news library' works incredibly well with my X4, it takes me under 10 seconds to download and open the epub and should work with any e-ink device that can install KOReader (or any other software with OPDS support). And I love that all articles are inside a single epub and I can easily go to another one from the TOC.
It's probably my most useful personal project and I like that by now it follows the 'set it and forget it' principle but in need, since it's written by hand, it's very easy to customize it: filter out AI/war/finance/local-gibberish/whatever articles, add new 'bridges' to websites without RSS, some articles don't respect html guidelines and need some tinkering, etc.
To be fair they are a supremely interesting problem to hack away at, and one that will meet you where you are.
Almost anyone can put together a basic search engine in a few thousand lines of code, it's just not very hard to make a program that will index a few million documents better than Confluence.
Then, between that first ansatz and a working scalable internet search engine, you have a pile of interesting problems touching every aspect of computer science and computer hardware and networking, enough so that hundreds of people will have gotten PhDs in narrow sub-problems of those problems you'll be facing.
It's great because you can just tackle the stuff you feel comfortable approaching and leave the rest for later.
Every time another nostalgia post comes along for MUDs people start replying with the name of a small MUD they enjoyed but I’m surprised how rare it is to see Iron Realms MUDs mentioned.
I’m almost certain they are the largest MUD development company to exist.
I played two of their MUDs — Achaea and Lusternia. The sheer imaginative scale of these worlds and engines are unmatched by even today’s standards. (And they still exist!)
PVP is a battle of engineering. The best PvPers build elaborate trigger systems that watch the terminal for specific maladies and conditions and counter them with herbs, potions, and skills.
The RP is similar to D&D but so much deeper. Where D&D is mostly storytelling by a DM, RP in huge commercial MUDs involve gods, physics, deeply entrenched politics, money, fame, and power spanning thousands of players.
Entirely player-driven economy. If you wanted a sword you could buy one from a player run market or commission a unique piece from a blacksmith. And boy it was truly unique. A blacksmith in Lusternia is really a wordsmith. A steel sword can be described as “honed to an obsidian finish”.
Peak human imagination, but sadly in a medium too many people can’t get into.
You just reminded me of Star Wars Roleplaying on Habbo Hotel when I was a preteen circa 2006. Habbo Hotel was basically an IRC and MUD with user-created hotel rooms. The Sith and Jedi orders were popular "rooms" in Habbo, and would often rise to the top and bring an influx of users– mostly teenagers.
But they were clearly gated, like a nightclub. There were those who were "in" the Jedi Temple or Sith academy, and those who were out. This creates a sort of exclusivity, and people would naturally want to join the Jedi Temple or Sith Academy. They'd have to agree to a set of rules written on a sticky note on the room's wall, and dress the part.
Sometimes all hell would break loose when a Sith Warrior or Inquisitor would come and attack the Jedi Temple. They were legally allowed to do this, as long as people were online to witness it.
It was really interesting how they battled each other with just text chat. They had specified rules where you'd have to type out five action lines (minimum of 5 words) after an attack in order to maime or kill someone. At any point in those five lines, the defender could use 2 lines to repel the attack. To add a complication, the actions had to be coherent with each other.
So it ended up being a lot of;
Sith: Jedi filth! Hiding in your temple, while the universe suffers. I will free them of you!
Jedi: Your oppression ends here, Sith!
Sith: swings lightsaber towards your body
Sith: it connects with your neck
Sith: it cuts through the muscle
Jedi: swings lightsaber at lightsaber (illegal: 4 words)
Jedi: it parries your lightsaber away
Sith: it connects through the bone (illegal: parried)
Of course, these would often devolve into long OOC (out of character) arguments, and this drama would bring in even more of a crowd. It was chaotic, and a whole bunch of fun.
It wasn't just RP fighting though. They would have all the Jedi initiates wear "robes" and hang out in rooms decorated like a Jedi temple. Then the Jedi Masters would conduct lessons and we'd have to memorise the Jedi code.
I still remember the Sith code. I had to memorise it and recite it at random times to the Sith Lords. When I graduated from that, I ended up teaching it myself to several acolytes.
"Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me."
I also always look for the IRE MUDs :) I played Achaea about 15 years ago; the community of players really makes the game what it is. (If anybody remembers Soludra, that's me!)
I just tried it with the prompt "Navigate to diffbot.com, find the careers page and link me to the first machine learning engineering listing." and it still works. Nothing on the web_fetch tool documentation mentions this patch either.
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