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Johan Bové

Needed a show like this to know there is hope for our future and our children's.
> An Optimist’s Guide to the Planet captures Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s search for people across the globe who are helping drive humanity toward a brighter, more sustainable future.

https://www.bloomberg.com/originals/series/an-optimists-guide-to-the-planet

Johan Bové

Testing out Marblism AI generated web applications. It's wild, but haven't made anything useful yet. Still reading through the docs and learning how to write proper user stories the AI can understand. https://dev.marblism.com/

Johan Bové

Had my first "Pick & Go" supermarket experience

2 min read

Around the corner of where I live in Düsseldorf Stadtmitte, more precisely "Am Wehrhahn" opened a hyper-modern "Pick & Go" Rewe supermarket.

This morning I went shopping there for the first time and I must admit, it worked seamlessly. Grabbed all the things I needed and placed it in my wheel-carrier, weighed the bananas and went to the self-checkout where I was greeted by a friendly hostess, and just confirmed what the system had registered in my purchase, without even having to take out everything again from the shopping trolly, confirmed the purchase, paid using NFC and walked out after scanning the code on the receipt. No app or initial registration was necessary. The system registers customers as avatars and then algorithms, (marketing term here is _AI_), deducts if you wanted to buy something or not through over 700 cameras and other sensors in the shop.

The tech is awesome. But it was for me still very nice to be greeted by a smiling human face at the end. And this is the key for me: instead of tediously scanning articles into the register, people can now help where needed and I do believe this gives them a stronger sense of work satisfaction. Don't get me wrong - there is nothing wrong with being a cashier as a job. What I experienced today was just a bit more personal, as contra-dictory this may seem.

More about the system and the tech behind it: https://mediacenter.rewe.de/pressemitteilungen/rewe-pick-and-go-kuenftig-auch-in-duesseldorf and also https://www.trigoretail.com/customer-stories/rewe/

Johan Bové

Great example of an actual live "sneaker net" application using RACHEL devices and an Android app - it allows to transfer messages and data bundles from areas without Internet connection to Internet connected regions.

http://datapost.site/

Johan Bové

Wondering that part of the charm and attraction of Christmas markets could come from a common nostalgia towards every day street markets in towns and a longing for more outside social life during the cold, clammy Winter days.

Johan Bové

The local energy Company is doing an Advent contest with a word guessing game, 21 letters long, it starts with a T and I got all other letters by looking at the source of their site... Put all of the letters into ChatGPT 3.5, but it is having real trouble coming up with something plausible.

Johan Bové

If snow fall on the mountains is reducing so much, and this snow acted as a water reservoir formed in Winter to get through the warmer, dry summers, then we should start creating huge water reservoirs on top of mountains; pumping the water up there when it rains.

Johan Bové

The best gift anyone could give me is the time to be able to finish reading some books.

Johan Bové

Github is like Linkedin for Developers

Johan Bové

Context-switches are a real productivity killer if it means that by the time you get back to the previous context your remote desktop session expired.

Johan Bové

Wondering how many Europeans know where the origin of the "black friday" promotions come from? Weirdly I haven't seen a single "black friday" here in Germany wishing us a happy Thanksgiving ... I guess any excuse for sending out more spam to promote doubtfully lucrative discounts is worth it?

Johan Bové

Hey Apple, it's 2023 - about time to start supporting the content indexation of markdown files in Spotlight out of the box, don't you think?

Johan Bové

Got my flu shot for this year!

Johan Bové

Really annoyed that the Apple MacBook does not have a USB Type A port anymore as now I cannot even connect the Iphone to it as I forgot the adapter in my other bag. This is a €2000 plus device that cannot connect to a €700 device just because of a stupid dongle.

Johan Bové

It would be hard to explain to anyone, some fifty years ago, how I accidentally bought apples grown in South-Africa at the supermarket here in Düsseldorf yesterday.

Johan Bové

Without cheating, how many text / code editors do you know and have you used until just this monent, excluding web forms?

My list:
Notepad, Notepad++, UltraEdit, Vim/Vi, Sublime Text, Brackets, Eclipse, Geany, VS Code, Visual Studio, Word, Frontpage, Dreamweaver, Netscape 4, Nano, Gvim, TextEdit, Wordpad, IntelliJ, Xcode

Johan Bové

I have a Steam account - of course - and it's still there even-though I haven't played a game for over ten years... Amazing how it's all just still there somewhere "in the cloud".

Johan Bové

I've been playing with Lego with my son and this evening we collected all his little Lego people and he was amazed to see just how many we collected already

Johan Bové

Grateful for my little family and being able to enjoy life as much as possible over the weekend. We have our own problems, but fortunately nothing we cannot handle. Standing still for a moment to reflect that. You never know when the table gets flipped over.

Johan Bové

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" just ends up with blind people starving to death.