@mrmartincowen.bsky.social
Users have been asking, for years, for more battery life, but manufacturers' claim that a thicker phone is undesirable, no one would actually buy it.
So they make a phone that's thicker and heavier than a single screen phone with 2x battery would be. While claiming it's thinner - unfolded.
So they make a phone that's thicker and heavier than a single screen phone with 2x battery would be. While claiming it's thinner - unfolded.
Samsung has launched its Galaxy Z Trifold phone — which folds out from a bar phone into a 10-inch tablet.
Is this a phablet too far?
(Unboxing video from Arun at youtu.be/qNKKSujit94)
Is this a phablet too far?
(Unboxing video from Arun at youtu.be/qNKKSujit94)
December 2, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Users have been asking, for years, for more battery life, but manufacturers' claim that a thicker phone is undesirable, no one would actually buy it.
So they make a phone that's thicker and heavier than a single screen phone with 2x battery would be. While claiming it's thinner - unfolded.
So they make a phone that's thicker and heavier than a single screen phone with 2x battery would be. While claiming it's thinner - unfolded.
Velly interwesting. Line 23 is the critical bit, like a compound literal (struct s){.element1 = 1} but for a scalar, and lets you take address of it without having to create another var. This is for a generic type behaviour.
December 1, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Velly interwesting. Line 23 is the critical bit, like a compound literal (struct s){.element1 = 1} but for a scalar, and lets you take address of it without having to create another var. This is for a generic type behaviour.
HN types not beating tech bro accusations here
November 30, 2025 at 10:01 PM
HN types not beating tech bro accusations here
Playing around with type polymorphism in C. I wanted one function which takes a type enum and a variable of that type without having to declare many functions all working with different types.
godbolt.org/z/M481To7P4
godbolt.org/z/M481To7P4
November 28, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Playing around with type polymorphism in C. I wanted one function which takes a type enum and a variable of that type without having to declare many functions all working with different types.
godbolt.org/z/M481To7P4
godbolt.org/z/M481To7P4
"What have you changed your mind about recently?"
is a question which can yield some insights about beliefs, how long we hold onto outdated ones and if you're capable of changing your mind when the evidence presents itself.
1/11
is a question which can yield some insights about beliefs, how long we hold onto outdated ones and if you're capable of changing your mind when the evidence presents itself.
1/11
November 26, 2025 at 6:25 PM
"What have you changed your mind about recently?"
is a question which can yield some insights about beliefs, how long we hold onto outdated ones and if you're capable of changing your mind when the evidence presents itself.
1/11
is a question which can yield some insights about beliefs, how long we hold onto outdated ones and if you're capable of changing your mind when the evidence presents itself.
1/11
With Black Friday looming, here are some Amazon alternatives
uk.bookshop.org
argos.co.uk
www.johnlewis.com
uk.bookshop.org
argos.co.uk
www.johnlewis.com
November 26, 2025 at 11:57 AM
With Black Friday looming, here are some Amazon alternatives
uk.bookshop.org
argos.co.uk
www.johnlewis.com
uk.bookshop.org
argos.co.uk
www.johnlewis.com
Underrated feature: not being able to enter a syntactically incorrect line. All later editors allow you to enter rubbish, then user confused by hundreds of errors at compile or run. Here only one line can be in error, localising scope of problem.
“What was the first code editor you ever used?”
November 25, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Underrated feature: not being able to enter a syntactically incorrect line. All later editors allow you to enter rubbish, then user confused by hundreds of errors at compile or run. Here only one line can be in error, localising scope of problem.
Added contract rates link and calculations to Salary Surveys at martincowen.me.uk/embedded.htm... for comparison with permanent rates.
Embedded | Martin Cowen
Senior Embedded Firmware Engineer familiar with STM32 ARM, Bluetooth LE, Nordic, Serial Comms, CRC, Lighting Controls
martincowen.me.uk
November 25, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Added contract rates link and calculations to Salary Surveys at martincowen.me.uk/embedded.htm... for comparison with permanent rates.
iPhone 13 mini was £100 less than iPhone 13, same parts, spec, performance. iPhone Air is £200 more than iPhone 17, worse in some ways. Many 12 & 13 mini users are ready for an upgrade but want mini size. Thin wasn’t demanded, hand sized is what counts.
Turns out that consumers like the idea of a phone that's the size of a cigarette pack and can easily fit in a pocket, but not one that's considerably bigger, but very, very thin. Apple makes a boo-boo. Needs to go back to the iPhone mini. www.ft.com/content/b015...
Apple’s ‘skinny’ iPhone falls flat with disappointing early sales
Consumers chose better value and superior performance over slim new design of Air model
www.ft.com
November 22, 2025 at 4:56 PM
iPhone 13 mini was £100 less than iPhone 13, same parts, spec, performance. iPhone Air is £200 more than iPhone 17, worse in some ways. Many 12 & 13 mini users are ready for an upgrade but want mini size. Thin wasn’t demanded, hand sized is what counts.
uncertain as to which one is correct at any given time
November 20, 2025 at 10:36 AM
uncertain as to which one is correct at any given time
Crashed Internally/Continuous Disintegration
November 18, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Crashed Internally/Continuous Disintegration
Cybersecurity professionals: Don't click on links in emails, especially to log in to banks.
This financial institution: click here in this email. Our Security people wanted a clearly understood URL, but Marketing overrode that because they need to track all engagements, obvs that's more important.
This financial institution: click here in this email. Our Security people wanted a clearly understood URL, but Marketing overrode that because they need to track all engagements, obvs that's more important.
November 18, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Cybersecurity professionals: Don't click on links in emails, especially to log in to banks.
This financial institution: click here in this email. Our Security people wanted a clearly understood URL, but Marketing overrode that because they need to track all engagements, obvs that's more important.
This financial institution: click here in this email. Our Security people wanted a clearly understood URL, but Marketing overrode that because they need to track all engagements, obvs that's more important.
And then downdetector.co.uk went down, because it too uses Cloudflare
Status overview
downdetector.co.uk
November 18, 2025 at 1:13 PM
And then downdetector.co.uk went down, because it too uses Cloudflare
That's clearly a hardware bug
November 17, 2025 at 11:33 AM
That's clearly a hardware bug
YouTube has lost the plot, I assure you nothing in my search history would relate to this
November 15, 2025 at 4:13 PM
YouTube has lost the plot, I assure you nothing in my search history would relate to this
As we approach the end of the year, your company might have unspent training budget that can be spent on books. The best engineers spend about £500/year on books and keeping themselves up to date. My list for this is year is at martincowen.me.uk/bookshelf.ht...
Bookshelf | Martin Cowen
List of books I have read
martincowen.me.uk
November 14, 2025 at 3:21 PM
As we approach the end of the year, your company might have unspent training budget that can be spent on books. The best engineers spend about £500/year on books and keeping themselves up to date. My list for this is year is at martincowen.me.uk/bookshelf.ht...
The funny thing about writing comments before coding in an interview: medium.com/@marciacripp...
is that I previously blogged about it
blog.martincowen.me.uk/comment-driv...
Why not adopt this practice every day?
is that I previously blogged about it
blog.martincowen.me.uk/comment-driv...
Why not adopt this practice every day?
November 12, 2025 at 9:01 PM
The funny thing about writing comments before coding in an interview: medium.com/@marciacripp...
is that I previously blogged about it
blog.martincowen.me.uk/comment-driv...
Why not adopt this practice every day?
is that I previously blogged about it
blog.martincowen.me.uk/comment-driv...
Why not adopt this practice every day?
Windows is both: I see you have an anti-virus installed, so I will use that instead of Defender.
and
I see you have a backup program installed (eg Easus ToDo) but when you restart I will insist you don't have backup running and must use OneDrive for that. And not let you start work until you submit.
and
I see you have a backup program installed (eg Easus ToDo) but when you restart I will insist you don't have backup running and must use OneDrive for that. And not let you start work until you submit.
November 12, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Windows is both: I see you have an anti-virus installed, so I will use that instead of Defender.
and
I see you have a backup program installed (eg Easus ToDo) but when you restart I will insist you don't have backup running and must use OneDrive for that. And not let you start work until you submit.
and
I see you have a backup program installed (eg Easus ToDo) but when you restart I will insist you don't have backup running and must use OneDrive for that. And not let you start work until you submit.
November 11, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Great argument from Carl
LLMs are just the next generation of data processing tech using lossy compression searching against a cloud scale index using unstructured query language. Not "thinking". Hallucinations are compression artifacts.
youtu.be/0qnZDMvJPh4
LLMs are just the next generation of data processing tech using lossy compression searching against a cloud scale index using unstructured query language. Not "thinking". Hallucinations are compression artifacts.
youtu.be/0qnZDMvJPh4
Generative AI's Place in the History of Tech: A Contrarian View
YouTube video by Internet of Bugs
youtu.be
November 10, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Great argument from Carl
LLMs are just the next generation of data processing tech using lossy compression searching against a cloud scale index using unstructured query language. Not "thinking". Hallucinations are compression artifacts.
youtu.be/0qnZDMvJPh4
LLMs are just the next generation of data processing tech using lossy compression searching against a cloud scale index using unstructured query language. Not "thinking". Hallucinations are compression artifacts.
youtu.be/0qnZDMvJPh4
Reposted
Before there were multimeters, there was the galvanometer. Born from Ørsted’s magnetic needle experiment and refined by Schweigger, Ampère, and Ohm, the galvanometer became the 19th century’s essential instrument for detecting and measuring electricity.
emedia.digikey.com/eMagazine-Vo...
emedia.digikey.com/eMagazine-Vo...
November 8, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Before there were multimeters, there was the galvanometer. Born from Ørsted’s magnetic needle experiment and refined by Schweigger, Ampère, and Ohm, the galvanometer became the 19th century’s essential instrument for detecting and measuring electricity.
emedia.digikey.com/eMagazine-Vo...
emedia.digikey.com/eMagazine-Vo...
Wonder how many scientific papers will be misunderstood by AI due to exponential notation which gets mangled in typesetting. Numbers like 106 would appear more often in their output than expected where a human would realise & correct to 10^6
November 8, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Wonder how many scientific papers will be misunderstood by AI due to exponential notation which gets mangled in typesetting. Numbers like 106 would appear more often in their output than expected where a human would realise & correct to 10^6
Hot take: speakers at conferences which will have a bigger video audience than in-person audiences should sit down. Even if most of the split screen is the slides, wandering around, kicking your feet and gesticulating is distracting and achieves nothing.
November 7, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Hot take: speakers at conferences which will have a bigger video audience than in-person audiences should sit down. Even if most of the split screen is the slides, wandering around, kicking your feet and gesticulating is distracting and achieves nothing.
Error handling with callbacks and line numbers in C.
If you put the __FILE__ and __LINE__ macros in the called functions, it will not show you the caller function location. Need to use a macro which wraps the function and passed params on, & adds these macros.
🧵
If you put the __FILE__ and __LINE__ macros in the called functions, it will not show you the caller function location. Need to use a macro which wraps the function and passed params on, & adds these macros.
🧵
November 6, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Error handling with callbacks and line numbers in C.
If you put the __FILE__ and __LINE__ macros in the called functions, it will not show you the caller function location. Need to use a macro which wraps the function and passed params on, & adds these macros.
🧵
If you put the __FILE__ and __LINE__ macros in the called functions, it will not show you the caller function location. Need to use a macro which wraps the function and passed params on, & adds these macros.
🧵
If you want to find the shortcut for a command in VS Code, you can type the name of the command, but if you want to reverse look up the keys to see what the command is, you can click the keyboard icon on the right in the search bar and then type the shortcut keys.
Ctrl-K Ctrl-S brings this up.
Ctrl-K Ctrl-S brings this up.
November 6, 2025 at 11:16 AM
If you want to find the shortcut for a command in VS Code, you can type the name of the command, but if you want to reverse look up the keys to see what the command is, you can click the keyboard icon on the right in the search bar and then type the shortcut keys.
Ctrl-K Ctrl-S brings this up.
Ctrl-K Ctrl-S brings this up.