They have done it. The current modern abstraction is called Vulkan, and the binary spec code for this machine is called SPIR-V.

The market is not just 3 players. These days we have these things called smartphones, and they all include a variety of different graphics cards on them. And even more devices than just those include decently powerful GPUs as well. If you look at the Contributors section of the extension in the post, and look at all the companies involved, you'll have a better idea.

There are still three players in smartphones realistically.

ARM makes their Mali line, which vendors like Mediatek license and puts straight on their chips.

Qualcomm makes their custom Adreno gpus. (Derived from Radeon Mobile). They won't sell it outside snapdragon.

Samsung again licensed Mali from ARM, but in their flagship exynos's they use AMD's gpus. They won't sell it outside exynos.

PowerVR makes gpus that are so outdated with features that Pixel 10 phones can't even run some benchmarks.

And then there's apple.

I have the opposite problem: I have to force myself to not take so many breaks!

Haha, sometimes I'm like that too, but sometimes it's the opposite

For me programming is the break.

AI has completely killed Google Translate. It is significantly superior in every way.

GT often uses the wrong word or changes the tone of a message. AI always gets the intent right and always seems to use the most appropriate words given the original intent/meaning (or at least something way better than what GT does). And, whenever there is doubt, I can argue with it, so AI is happy to explain the nuances and differences between the possibilities.

Edit: I recently had to send a semi-formal email requesting something from a government employee in a different country (using a language I'm a beginner at), and AI was immensely helpful in getting the right tone (neither informal or too formal) and everything else right. The Google Translate version of what I had originally written was miles and miles and miles worse than what AI helped me craft.

> AI always gets the intent right and always seems to use the most appropriate words given the original intent/meaning

How do you know? Why are you using something to translate if you’re a native speaker of both languages?

I said I am a beginner in one of the languages.

How do I know their answer is best? I can verify their answers through other means, and I understand both languages enough to realize one answer is more appropriate than the other, even if I can't come up with those words directly using only my brain.

Google Translate uses AI...

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/g...

True, but Google Translate was already "AI". They previously used LSTMs. And before LSTMs, it was ML-like statistical translation.

Some countries still charge for SMS. That's why WhatsApp is so popular in many places of the world.

in a lot EU countries, still today telco contracts are marketed with "...and unlimited number of SMS into all networks..."

Its still widely used :-D

No way really .. amazing in 2026 if true

There's basically two mobile worlds in India. The middle class has mobile plans basically like the rest of the world, while the poor (especially the rural poor but also to some extent the urban poor) have a pay-per-use account that also functions as their bank. So sending a text might cost 2 rupees, and an MMS might cost 6.

To me the most painful switch was Gnome 2 to Gnome 3. I still miss Gnome 2.

I left Gnome 3 for other WMs (eventually settled on cinnamon), but every once in a while I decided to give Gnome 3 a try, just to be disappointed again. I felt like those people in abusive romantic relationships that keep coming back and divorcing over and over again. "Oh, Gnome has really changed now, he won't beat me again this time!".

Kde 3 to 4 for me. I still miss you amarok 1.4.10.

But don't you love plasma applets in your media player that now requires a MySQL server instance and randomly deletes your collection metadata???

systemd was a problem for early adopters (e.g., Fedora). Distros like Debian joined the party later and, as a result, got things way more stable. I never had any systemd-related problem in Debian, while for Fedora (some years earlier) I had some bugs affecting my ability to work. They all seem to work very fine now. Things took a while to mature, but it just works now.

It was a similar story with Pulseaudio - it caused pain for early adopters but, by the time that Debian stable switched to it by default, almost all of the issues and corner cases had long since been worked out and it was almost completely trouble-free.

Mind you, the libc5 -> glibc2 upgrade was pretty horrible in Debian land, so they didn't always get it right in the early days...

Would you mind explaining more of your reasoning? I don't think I fully understand why you're saying what you're saying.

It all started when I bought a stationary bike at C***co with the goal of doing it twice per week for 10 minutes each session. I knew if I had bigger plans, I would end up not doing it.

So after those sessions became routine, I increased to 15 minutes, then 3x per week, then changed from time-based to distance-based, etc. etc. Every time I pushed the boundary and saw myself not doing it anymore, I went back.

Most people would still describe me as sedentary, but I'm already much better than what I was earlier.