I’m trying to use Termux on my smartphone, and it works, but I’m having to say goodbye to vi after 40 years because it’s no good for a touchscreen
vi has no tolerance for fat-fingered wrong-keying at all, it just piles up into a mass of “that was not what I was trying to do in any way”
So I’m having to learn nano and the default readline editing keys like a n0000b
I guess both at once is not the way to do it, better do nano first — fancy-editing the command line is not that important 
I’m having to get used to nano at work too. We evicted vi from our systems for reasons I didn’t really pay attention to (bigger install with more dependencies and more potential for bugs/flaws?). I’m not really great in vi, but the things I did use it for, I had committed to muscle memory for years. And of course they don’t work in nano and it doesn’t handle pasting properly. So it’s just annoying.
… there’s a lot of “what’s the nano key for 𝑥” and then it’s just “nano doesn’t do that” 
I’ve gotta be honest, I’ve never actually used vi (or similar) for anything more than basic text editing. But it’s always been the one editor that was available on any linux system I used. Just the basics, which are pretty easily learned once:
Pretty much the only “advanced” thing I occasionally do in vi is use a regex for text replacement. I’ve accidentally used some of the other features occasionally, but that’s a one-off.
The few times I’ve had to use nano… well, it’s prettier, but it doesn’t really make things easier.
My iPod Touch 4, that I bought refurbished in 2013, will no longer connect to the iTunes Store.
… the benefit of nano over vi being if we hit a couple of wrong keys it only makes two mistakes, rather than 2 × 2𝑛 + 2 magical improvements 
I mean… the worst I’ve seen is accidentally inserting a letter multiple times because I started typing before getting into insert mode. A quick quit-without-save/reload usually rights things if I do something accidental. But, YMMV 
I have used vi (or more likely vim) when I have had no other choice. I’ve learned enough of it to get by, but I’ve never enjoyed using it.
I’ve used nano (and pico before it) because it gets installed by default and is usually available, even on BSD. I find it generally inoffensive, with most of the necessary functionality being clearly spelled out.
If I’m going to spend much time working with text in a terminal, I’m going to install emacs. I have no justification for it other than I got into it at one point in my life and I’m just used to it now. I’ve never been particularly productive in it, and I’ve never really gotten to the point where I can copy and paste without using the menu or just pasting into the terminal, but it still feels better than the other two.
That said, if I’m working with text in a terminal, it’s generally just to modify a config file here or there. If there’s anything that’s larger or actually important, then I should be checking it into source control. If I’m doing that, then there’s probably a better editing experience to be had locally. These days that usually means VS Code. It’s lightweight by today’s standards, as well as free and open source, and it supports just about anything I want to throw at it with very little trouble.
AI is discussed…by the Fourth Doctor.
The closest thing they had to GPS in 1971:
Our family’s version at that time was Dad drives, Mom reads the map.
Not just the tech in the show…but for analog CRT TVs, lol.
The Vintage Computer Festival Midwest happened recently:
I’ve been watching some of Veronica’s videos recently. She doesn’t cover vintage topics exclusively, but her enthusiasm and personality are extremely infectious. I think she adds a really nice perspective to this event.
LGR has a different perspective, both from being a previous attendee and also being an exhibitor. His points about growing pains are definitely relevant, and I hope the organizers are thinking about how they can address those for future events.
Overall I think this would be a fun event to attend, and seems extremely in line with the mood of this thread.
As Plotkin notes, the interpreter source code doesn’t have a lot of interesting, personal, or other revealing comments or artifacts. It does contain some unintentional commentary on what it was like trying to produce commercial software in the 1980s:
There’s a bunch of internal documentation about creating disks for the various platforms. Remember that in the 1980s, floppy disks were pretty incompatible between platforms. To write a C64 disk, you had to get the game data and interpreter onto a C64 which could then write it to disk. But how did you do that? No Wifi, no Ethernet port… Infocom’s solution was to run a serial cable from their DEC-20 (where all the games were developed) to the C64 (or wherever). The serial transfer program is called “TFTP” in most of these folders. Do strings like
com1:9600,n,8turn you on? You might be a serial port!
Was kind of a toss-up between this going here and in the “get your game on” thread. 
It’s cool to see how groundbreaking top-tier software was often kludged together the same way a hobbyist on a shoestring budget might have done it.
I’ve been surprised at how long lasting the demand for DVDs is. I have a client who sells his online courses as a DVD and book combo in addition to streaming, and about half the people buy the DVD/Book version. I didn’t even know that many people still owned a DVD player.
I finally gave my external DVD player (Mac SuperDrive) to my mom. She has the complete set of Perry Mason DVDs, and enjoys re-watching them. Now that she has given up cable, it’s the easiest way for her.
At our house, we went on a hunt to see if we had a DVD player, since we were considering renting Oppenheimer. But as it turns out, we could only “rent” the stream. But there IS a DVD player in the house. It has never been used.