KZ ES4 were recommended by DankPods as great cheap wired headphones, in the UK they’re £20 and a replacement cable is £10. They’re 3.5mm so you’d also need a USB-C dongle. Not exactly BIFL but I liked them, although I daily drive AirPods now because the convenience factor is just so much higher.

Current FOSS supported smartphones are mostly not really compatible with BIFL

Firstly, Rooting/ flashing non-manufacturer firmware voids your warranty. A phone without manufacturer support is going to struggle to be BIFL. If you’re able to flash the original ROM back on that protects you some, but if a failure leaves you unable to flash firmware then you’re SOL.

Also, the FOSS OS might be solid but many ports to specific phones are enabled by only a couple of developers doing it on a voluntary basis. You might well find multiple FOSS OS are being maintained by a single person who is really into keeping their phone compatible with multiple FOSS projects. Unless you’re going to be that person, you would want to check that’s not the case, because if that person upgrades you may find yourself without support which again is not BIFL.

The closest you’re going to get is probably something like the Fairphone. They’re designed to be long-term repairable, ethically produced and running FOSS. But they are also far from the cutting edge. Pick your poison.

Where would one go to get a custom made backpack with double stitching?

Bit late to the party, but something to be aware of if you’re buying Solovair. I have a pair of astronaut boots, had them for about 20 months, worn them almost daily and I need to get them resoled now. I went to my local cobblers and they said they don’t do Solovair, they just do glue jobs. I went to Solovair (I’m local to their factory) and they said that they’re currently doing so much business that they’re not able to offer resoling. They provided details of two webshops (keycobbler.co.uk and bootrepaircompany.co.uk) who do offer this service, but that involves sending them off for weeks and weeks. So I’m going to need to buy a second pair of boots to wear while my first pair are out for repair. And the resole is a significant chunk of the original boot cost: I spent under £170 on the boots, and they’re going to cost £70 to resole plus shipping.

I’m still going to do it, I love them and I’d have spent a similar amount on trainers in the same period just through wear and tear, but it’s not particularly a money saver or a convenience.

I guess that when I do have two pairs I’ll be able to rotate them daily so this will be something that comes up every four years rather than every two.

I’d heard lava tubes pitched as one of the more straightforward ways of building a moon base, fascinating to learn that this would actually be a return to form for human dwellings.

Humans: we just like living in lava tubes.

Last night I stuck all the major meteor showers into my calendar. I’d gone outside and seen stars and remembered how l much I love to see stars and I rarely stargaze nowadays. I’m going to make more of an effort, especially for the seasonal meteors.

You can’t afford it now. This tech is going to be something people can do in their sheds within a decade.

This is insane. Right now I’m reading The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman (formerly of DeepMind) and I’d been a bit concerned that he was all hype, but giving humanity a 45-fold increase in materials we know about? That’s enormous. The future is going to be a crazy place.

I found the dark world very tedious, from what I remember. One aesthetic throughout the whole game that was very dreary to look at. Has been many years since I played it though.

I set up a play-money prediction market on whether this would happen, and it doesn’t look like many people have faith in Musk to pull this one off.

Sounds like a problem for people from Reading (UK).

I’m with you, I’m a big nerd but rarely bounced so hard off a sci-fi show as I bounced off Fringe.