I'm in a similar boat and am wondering... Is there much that can be done with these iPads beside turn them into e-waste?

You can still browse the internet. Safari still works. I have ancient 1st gen iPad Air and I use it for that; you can still watch YouTube (from the web), it still works fine. Anything that has a web app mostly works.

If you manage to install decent apps in time, you can use these as e-readers or video players. But batteries will eventually fail and all what you'll have will be a fancy fragile chopping board.

I was gifted with iPad 1, Air 1 - first won't charge for 6 years now and data I didn't synchronize are gone, second one needs a serious "warm-up" before charging and while Apple released 12.5.8 in the end of January, it won't get any new apps.

iPad 3rd gen can be downgraded to iOS 8 (which runs slightly better than iOS 9), and dual-booting to iOS 6 is also doable (and actually can run more apps than later versions thanks to the 3rd party mods).

There's a community around /r/LegacyJailbreak dedicated to running old iOS devices.

Thanks, I will look into that.

You can jailbreak it and attempt to bypass app restrictions (e.g. with 3dappversionspoofer). Ymmv. https://ios.cfw.guide describes how to jailbreak.

Why can’t you still use it?

You just won’t be able to download new apps as they bump their minimum.

Wait for a trade in special and take advantage of it. Or use it for safari only.

Use it as a control center for your home automation.

maybe use as a e-reader or watch ripped media on it? if it's jailbreakable i am sure there's a lot of stuff to do too

I don't think it'd need Balatro playthroughs to be in text form though. Google owns YouTube and has been doing automatic transcriptions of vocalized content on most videos these days, so it'd make sense that they used those subtitles, at the very least, as training data.

I only recently discovered Reticulum, only to then learn that the developer has retired from working on it. Do you know if there's still any community members carrying the torch?

The discord is still very active, and there are still commits from original developer, so I am not sure. Its a simple enough protocol, though, and it's been reimplemented a few times. I made my own no-class python version, js, C, etc. Someone made a rust version.

He has not retired from working on it. He just got fed up with the community and is now pushing changes without allowing github issues and discussions.

What I got from this comment is that John Deere could be a competitor with Tesla for FSD. (/s, but only slightly)

I have to say I work for John Deere to discuss this more, even though I don't speak for the company.

A DOT (I'm not sure which DOT) just did a press release on how they used John Deere guidance on a snow plow which allowed them to clear the road in a blizzard so an ambulance could get to the hospital (I was surprised they can get enough of a GPS signal, but apparently they did). Auto steer allows someone to drive a plow when you can't see the pavement/lines without first having to memorize the road by the posts/trees on the side of the road.

However there is a big difference between Deere auto steer and Tesla FSD: safety. Tesla has sensors to see if someone/something is in the way and algorithms to go around - critics claim they don't work well, but they work infinity times better than the complete lack of any of those sensors/algorithms in Deere's system. If you are using the Deere system it can hold a lane to within a couple cm - but you have to look out the window constantly because it will just drive right into anything in the way. This is good enough for farming (nobody/nothing is going to be in front of the tractor anyway), or the DOT (they can't see the road at all, but they still have trained operators ready to hit the brake) - but Tesla is going after the "you can take a nap" market.

I wouldn't be surprised if Deere has more miles of self driving than Tesla and Waymo combined, and a better safety record. However this is only because Deere's system is used in situations where the odds are against there being anything to harm in the first place, while Tesla/Waymo are trying for the much harder open road with who knows what in the way.

Now Deere is working on the full autonomous solutions, I'm not sure what the status is (I think some are out there for use in very limited situations). I'm not allowed to say anything more about these plans (I know some is public but I'm not sure what)

I just happened to recently learn about Reticulum from another part of the internet and find it fascinating. Am I correct in thinking that it can basically run on anything that can run arbitrary code and the ability to talk to another device? (seems like it'd even work over serial if one had the determination to make it work)

- If it runs Python and pip/pipx, and you can pull in the required packages via pip/pipx, it'll run Reticulum.

- On 32-bit x86 platforms it has to build the PyCA/cryptography module, but works fine after it does that.

- Reticulum supports a number physical interfaces, serial is one of them. It of course has the "RNode" intefaces for LoRa radios. For Ethernet, there is "AutoInterface" which uses IPv6 autoconfiguration for peer discovery and IPv6 UDP for transport but doesn't rely on DNS, DHCP, or anything else. If your PC, phone, or other involved devices on the same network have IPv6 enabled and no filtering is happening on layer 2 then it's dead simple - any device there will see announces from others and be able to transact with you not doing much more than spinning up MeshChat.

- Other interface types are TCP client, TCP server, IPv4 UDP, I2P, and a pipe interface. The pipe interface is interesting as it's basically stdin/stdout to an executable of your choice, so you can use that to make Reticulum available over really anything you could dream up, such as an SSH tunnel.

The only fully-functional stack currently available requires Python >= 3.8, which is the main limitation to where it will run. But there’s still a lot you can do with that!

there is a pretty compatible rust implementation as well which claims to target microcontrollers https://github.com/BeechatNetworkSystemsLtd/Reticulum-rs

Did you use it? I've never seen it used outside of Beechat's own devices.

so you mean it would work from Iran?

I literally JUST bought a Thumby out of a vending machine this past weekend, so this post feels a bit serendipitous for me. Thanks for sharing, and I'll have to check this out!

Congrats! Unplayable by most means but absolutely incredible how tiny it is so I love it.

While I would love to agree with you, in America restaurants of all sizes (and personal transportation companies) seemingly often rely on tips from customers to supplement the wages of their workers instead of just paying them fairly.

Yeah so you shouldn't help them do that if you disagree with the practice

It's a collective action problem: it can't be solved by individuals like this. All you'll achieve is complicity in wage theft. A viable approach might be to prefer doing business with companies who promise their workers a good wage, but this requires that your local businesses actually make that commitment. To get that, you'll have to go outside the abstraction of the market, and actually talk to decisionmakers within the businesses. (This is sometimes called "activism".)

No, I disagree that other peoples ethical failures spread to you if you don't participate in the ethical failure. If you disagree on ethical grounds with something, just don't do it. To the extent that you could simply not frequent those places.

This is really cool! I'd be curious if one could 3D print different resonance chambers to get different desired sounds from the speaker.

They do have very basic EQ but for sure you have enough documentation to modify the speaker itself if you'd like.

I was today years old when I found out that dang's first name is Dan

You'll never guess what letter dang's last name starts with.

A as in Ang, clearly.

No, he's Asian. The n is doing double-duty. His last name is Ng :p

That's exactly what a French person with the last name of Les would say!

I was wondering if anybody "ate the onion" from the other day...