I was an original Pebble Kickstarter wearer from 2012, then got the initial Time, then the first Android smartwatches (Moto 360!) then basically every Apple Watch from then to now. Even used Google Glass a few months in 2013.

I like my wearables. I use features on my Apple Watch constantly: NFC payments, voice reminders, fitness and sleep tracking, make my iPhone yell out so I can find where I put it, etc.

But not a single damn wearable I've had has captured a fraction of the charm the original Pebble and Pebble Time had. Their UIs are low-res by modern standards, and greyscale or largely solid colors, but wow.

Dug up some videos as reference. Here's one that highlights what the core system UI aesthetic is like. Notice the transitions as you use the UI. I remember it feeling really snappy too, and it feels great to use a UI that moves like that with physical tactile buttons, as opposed to scrolling a Digital Crown or using the touch screen on an Apple Watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdRENEQcymQ

And aside from the system UI, the community of apps that existed for it back then and no doubt will continue to grow now has a lot of charm too. The creators of all the apps are making them out of love, not to be a Top 10 on an Apple app store. And they don't exactly have a strong cohesive system UI to comply with unlike Apple. Human Interface Guidelines are wonderful for phones and tablets and for serious app ecosystems I depend on, but watches are Not That Serious as far as I'm concerned so the individuality and love within each app just fills me heart with joy every time I look down at my wrist.

This is super impressive.

I'm not disagreeing.

A sibling [dead] comment to mine is a rebuttal to "just post the prompt", where it itself was expanded to several paragraphs that each say nearly nothing, including this gem:

> "That’s not a critique of the writing. It’s a diagnosis"

I miss when people just typed their thoughts concisely and hit send without passing it to an inflater. I'd maybe have a chance of understanding the sibling comment's point.

> Y did.

> And that might be...

It's just so... AI. If the author wanted to make a pro-AI-writing point, maybe they shouldn't have let the AI start their essay with the exact AI grammar we're all exhausted having to read every day.

The specific screenshot they show is the very first start menu they cobbled together for Threshold, which would later be redesigned again before shipping as Windows 10. The screenshot is also showing off early adaptations of Windows 8 apps running in movable windows -- before that, they could only run full- or split-screen!

The sound machine linked here was really helpful for me when I had some distressing tinnitus due to concerts several years ago. If I listened to this somewhat loudly for several minutes, I'd then get about 2-3 minutes of what felt like pure silence. And for a little while after that as the tinnitus came back, my brain interpreted it as a gentle white noise instead of a continuous high-frequency tone. Then it went back to the tone a little while later. So if I was having trouble sleeping due to hyperfocusing on the tone I'd first pop in some airpods and listen to this for a few mins.

Nowadays my tinnitus is much less bothersome. Probably a combination of objectively getting a little better, and me getting more acclimated to it. Plus I've been using good musician's ear plugs for all my concerts and raves since then which stopped it from getting worse.

It's like, you actually can describe one of two burgers as "healthier" even though they're both unhealthy. One is just less harmful. It's a valid use of language.

It had one failure, but the way it failed was so alarming I'm hesitant to ever try them again. It not only failed while engaged, but it froze which meant it still showed the bright green outline indicating "I'm still engaged!" with no alert sounds, visual indication of disengagement, or automatic restart.

I only noticed something was off when my car started to drift outside the lanes during a curve, which took me longer to notice than necessary because it still looked engaged and it looked like a somewhat typical case of understeering until I started exiting the lane. It also never booted back on again, so something went seriously wrong during an otherwise routine drive.

Stock driver assistance systems (e.g. Rivian Driver+, Tesla Autopilot) have redundant computers it can fall back on if the primary fails. If Comma offered a self-contained device that was demonstrably redundant at a hardware level I'd be willing to give it another shot!

- https://maps.google.com (satellite view)

- https://earth.google.com (also in browser, possibly better camera controls for what you want)

- Bing Maps (3D flyover mode, more stale data in my experience)

- Apple Maps satellite view (only on macOS/iOS)

- Google Earth VR[1] (requires a Windows PC and a VR headset that can connect to it)

- Microsoft Flight Sim 2020/2024 (requires a beefy Windows PC, uses Bing Maps plus a lot of other enhancements and rendering goodness. Most lifelike "feels like I'm there" but not true to earth)

I'm not aware of splat-based city photogrammetry aside from one-offs like this but I'd love to learn if there's any such projects!

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/348250/Google_Earth_VR/