2026-06-26 08:00:00
It's July again! Soon, anyway. And this means two things: Heat waves (hate it) and computer shenanigans thanks to the Old Computer Challenge (love it). This is what I started this blog with three years ago, and I've participated every year since. Last year the community was a bit meh, and for a while it looked like nobody was interested this time, but Tekk came up with a nice concept and updated the website accordingly. This year's challenge is again not strictly defined, but I like the topic: Make something yourself, to combat the onslaught of AI slop we're being subjected to. I think that's a great idea, and I'm sure I'll come up with something and I hope some of you will, too.
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2026-06-19 08:00:00
I recently discovered that Bubbles offers the option to embed a widget on your website, to show how often your post has been upvoted and also to nudge people to go upvote in the first place. I'm not sure if I really want this on my blog and if it really has any kind of benefit... The idea behind it of course is to get your post in front of more eyes and increase your reach and visibility, and this leads back to the question why I write a blog in the first place. Is it just to get my thoughts out, or is it to have an "audience" and have people read what I write?
A little bit of both of course, but I'm never really sure where on this spectrum I really stand. But I thought I'd give it a try and see if I like it. It's all the way at the bottom and not particularly well integrated (yet) because I'm not good at web design, but it's there for now. What do you think, keep it or leave it? And do I have to do this influencer thing now where I tell you to like, comment, subscribe, upvote and share my post? Don't forget to turn on notifications and ring the bell so you don't miss anything!
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2026-06-18 08:00:00
This week, the new Commodore under CEO Peri Fractic (actor turned Youtuber Christian Simpson) announced the release of their latest product, a flip phone they called the Callback. And people online went nuts. Some love it, but most seem to hate it and the feedback has been overwhelmingly (very) negative. I have some thoughts too, so I thought I'd write them out here.
I actually like it.
I used to own a Samsung Z230 flip phone in the late 2000s and I absolutely loved it. The new Commodore phone is basically the same form factor, so I like it just for this, but it also has a few other things going for it.
It has modern connectivity (LTE, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS), a decent enough SOC (it doesn't have flagship specs, but this is not a flagship phone - the SOC just needs to be "good enough", which I think it is), and it's running the Linux-based Sailfish OS, which is a bit less open than I'd like in an operating system, but it can apparently run (most) Android apps, so there's a huge software library available. And it comes with a user-replaceable battery! It's sad that this is even worth mentioning as a feature, but that's the world we live in right now.
But a Linux flip phone in a flip phone with a keyboard and decent modern connectivity and specs? Sounds perfect for me. I never like the touchscreen-only approach, and if I could have a phone that does all the things modern phones do in a small but usable form factor with a physical keyboard, I'd be happy. I'd also be fine with T9, it takes some getting used to but I was pretty fast at typing messages back then.
Just in terms of what this device is and what it's supposed to be able to do, I really like it and I would actually be tempted to get it, because it ticks a lot more boxes of what I want from a phone for me than whatever Samsung, Google or Apple have to offer.
However...
Let's start with the price. 499€/$ on preorder (excluding tax) is way too high for what this device is. 199 would be ideal, 299 would be acceptable, but 499 is a non starter. I get that they're manufacturing small quantities and so they can't profit from the economy of scale, but that's still way more than I'm willing to pay.
Then there's the fact that it's marketed as a "digital detox" device, which means that the installation of social media apps, email apps and even browsers is blocked at the OS level, according to their FAQ. And that's completely inacceptable for me. It would be fine if they weren't preinstalled because of the whole digital detox angle, but outright blocking them from ever being installed? With that, they already lost me. If I want some random guy in California to decide what I can and cannot do with the thing that I bought, I'll buy an iPhone. And I don't have an iPhone precisely because of this.
I'd also like to know how exactly this fits into the "Commodore" branding. Did the C64 prevent certain software that the company didn't like from running? Did the Amiga block email? Did these machines set up rules for what you were and were not allowed to do with them? I don't think so.
And then the marketing itself. I get that they're going for a 2000s Frutiger Aero aesthetic, because it's a flip phone, but... why? What does that have to do with Commodore? The first product from this company was a replica of a 1982 computer, and now all of a sudden they're jumping forward by 25 years to a time period when Commodore didn't even exist anymore. That's just confusing. And it doesn't help that all the pictures of the phone and everything surrounding it feel just so cheap. A lot of people called them AI generated slop, and I don't know if they are AI generated or not, but they're certainly mostly CG and feel pretty cold and lifeless as a result. I get the same vibes here that I get from Apple's high-gloss keynote events. And I don't like it.
I could go on, but these are my main thoughts. I actually like the device itself, but the price is too steep and there are too many questionable decisions surrounding it that put me off. I'm not as attached to the Commodore brand as some other people are, but even I am wondering why this has the Commodore name on it. This sounds more like a Christian Simpson device. It's something he wants and because he now runs a tech company he just decides to make it, no matter if it makes sense for the brand or not.
I'm still curious enough about the device itself that I'm looking forward to the reviews, For all we know, this could be a very capable phone. And I would guess that they are going to soften their stance on the whole "browsers and emails are blocked" nonsense if there's enough backlash. After all, my 2006 Samsung flip phone could receive emails and had a (rudimentary) browser, and there is no reason for this phone not to have that.
I just hope that if this fails, it doesn't tank the whole company. That would be a shame.
There's one point I'd like to make in their defence. Some people seem to have pretty unrealistic expectations of what this company can and cannot produce at this point in their existence. I read some comments online that they should bring out a new floppy disk drive, or even make all new CRTs.
And yes, these are products that people in the retro community would want, but... there are no more factories in the world that can manufacture floppy drive heads or picture tubes. They all disappeared, and with them the tools and the know-how of how to manufacture these things. You can't just call Sony and ask them to make new Trinitron tubes for you, because they decommissioned all the factories and tooling long ago. It wouldn't be impossible to spin up a new CRT factory of course, but it would be a massive undertaking requiring an upfront investment in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which this company doesn't have. And for what? For a product that's going to sell a few thousand items? Would you be willing to pay thousands of Dollars/Euros for a CRT so they can recoup the cost of building a new factory?
Developing a product from scratch is expensive, and manufacturing it is even more expensive, especially if it contains components that aren't readily available anymore and that need to be custom made. So putting something together that's already mostly available or can be made from standard components is likely the only thing they can realistically do at this point, until they build up the funds and the expertise to start developing products of their own.
If they survive for this long, that is.
2026-06-17 08:00:00
In Hyde's recent Over/Under series of interview posts, David left the question "If you could be transported back in history to a period of time, when would it be and why?" for the next participant, who happened to be Elena Rossi. She gave a great answer, and then David and Hyde answered the same question too on their blogs, so I thought I'd chime in with my two cents as well.
If I had a time machine, this thing would get a lot of use, because there are so many historic periods I'd want to visit; I'd go see Elvis live on stage, and the Beatles. I'd visit Germany before it was bombed to pieces during the second world war. I'd go back 2000 years and visit ancient Rome, and the region I grew up in, when it was under Roman rule. Then go back another 2000 years and see the Egyptian pyramids when they were still shiny and new. Woolly Mammoths were also still alive 4000 years ago, so I'd go and see them, too. And why not travel back a full 100 million years to see some dinosaurs?
But here's what I would really love to do.
I'd love to go back maybe 5 million years, to a time when humans were still pretty much apes living in trees. And then jump forward in time in increments of two or three hundred thousand years, and watch the evolution of humans take shape.
We know a lot about our evolution from the fossil record, but a lot of it is still unknown. When did we shed our fur? When did we start walking upright? When did we first start to use language? What did the different human species that once existed look like, and how do they compare to us? When did humans first arrive in Europe? When did different skin, hair and eye colours evolve?
All these are questions that we have a somewhat decent understanding of, but I think it would be really interesting to witness all this in person and not just see reconstructions of what humans might have looked like 2 million years ago in a museum.
There was also a brief period, around 40.000 years ago, when modern humans and Neanderthals lived in Europe at the same time. I find that endlessly fascinating. Could you tell them apart? If you saw a group of humans then, would you have been able to definitively say which species you were looking at? I once read that while Neanderthals looked different than humans, they probably didn't look any more different than modern human ethnicities look different from each other anyway. So chances are, both groups would look both strange and familiar at the same time.
That's what I would love to do. Take a tour through the evolution of humanity, to see where we came from, how we got to where (and what) we are today and to see our closest relatives who aren't around anymore. I think that would keep me busy for a long time to come.
It's probably for the best though that I don't have a time machine, because in every time period other than the modern age, meaning the last two or three hundred years, I would very likely be dead within days, if not hours after arriving, because I have absolutely zero survival skills. I would either be taken out by wildlife (stomped on by a Mammoth, eaten by a T-Rex) or be identified as a stranger by the local population and processed accordingly (thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, clubbed to death by a gang of Neanderthals) or I would simply catch some weird disease or parasite (if I made the mistake of eating or drinking something there) that my immune system had no idea what to do with and wither away.
But one can dream.
2026-06-12 08:00:00
A few weeks ago I gave myself permission to skip the intro of these posts if I can't think of anything interesting or clever to say, and I skipped it twice since then. Well, I've been informed that people miss the intro, so I'm going to do my best to bring it back ;)
There's just not a lot happening in my life currently, and I'm in a bit of a writing slump, so I struggle to come up with interesting or funny things to talk about. That's also why I haven't been blogging a lot recently. I guess that's part of a natural ebb and flow, sometimes you're very creative, sometimes you're not. But I know from experience that even when I'm in a slump, staying with it and not just giving up entirely can help me get out of it. So thank you to the people who told me that they enjoyed and miss the intros, I'll do my best to keep writing them.
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2026-06-05 08:00:00
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