If you crank up Viper to its maximum craziness setting, you can enter Emacs and vi commands at the same time. It's glorious, and actually quite nice if you have mild RSI symptoms
Both Apple and Ireland claim that the tax rate always applied to everybody and not just to a specific company. Furthermore, Apple claims to be current on all of their Irish taxes and to, in fact, be Ireland's largest tax payer.
The EU claims that none of these statements are true.
It'll be interesting to see which side is closer to the actual truth once the facts slowly become public.
I'll never understand why Slashdot likes to link to poorly written and misleading summaries, when the original blog post is so much more readable and informative. I suggest everybody skip the "Quartz" article and instead read the original blog post. Thankfully, for once it was in fact included in the Slashdot summary, even if it was downplayed: https://deepmind.com/blog/wave...
Went to a retreat at a monastery in German one time. They immediately told us about the three B's. They has placed the chapel right next to the swimming pool and the bar. You could pray (Beten), swim (Baden) and drink (Bier trinken) all that the same time. Those Catholic monks know how to party.
There is an obvious way to fix this. But it takes a lot of work to change the existing culture, and the transition phase will be painful.
Do what Europe has been doing successfully for decades. Lower the drinking age to 16 years, and raise the driving age to 18 years. Kids will still drink, but the thrill of doing something crazy and/or illegal has long since worn off, by the time they get their drivers licenses and get into college. Also, there is a lot less stigma around drinking. So, calling another adult to give you a ride home is really not a big deal.
I have grown up in this culture (in Germany), and excessive drinking is a lot less of a problem than it is in the US. People still get drunk, don't get me wrong, but hear of far fewer cases of drunk driving and I have a really hard time remembering the last time I heard of anybody going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
You'll be even more fucked if the EU ruling stands. According to what the US government has been saying for the last few days, if Apple ends up paying back taxes in Ireland, the IRS will have to credit them for (part of) that amount. So, Apple would pay even less in the US.
That's why the US, Ireland, and Apple all agree, you can't arbitrarily change tax rules and pick and choose what you happen to like. There are international treaties and all of them are interconnected. They probably should be changed. But that has to be a concerted effort for there not to be bad unintended consequences.
How can T-Mobile differentiate between these, as far as I know the connection to youtube is cryptographically secured.
Even with TLS encrypted HTTPS connections, you can see the domain name of the request. If it says youtube.com, T-Mobile can rate limit the connection to something much slower than what it usually would give you. And the rate limiting forces YouTube to downgrade the video resolution.
So, it's not T-Mobile that selects the lower video resolution, it's YouTube. All T-Mobile does is provide differential network performance based on service; of course, that sounds suspiciously close to a violation of network neutrality. But that's a question for the FCC to decide.
I suspect the reason why this originally didn't work for YouTube, when T-Mobile first starting rolling out BingeOn is the fact that Google is increasingly using HTTP/2.0 which supports multiple streams in a single connection, and it also is often using QUIC which fundamentally looks very different to a HTTP connection over TCP.
SMS and soft-tokens (such as the Google Authenticator cellphone app) are better than nothing. But they don't provide for particularly secure second factors, especially if the web site is a valuable target.
I don't understand why so few sites (pretty much just Google and Github) use FIDO U2F hardware tokens. They are much more secure as the browser can cryptographically verify that there is no phishing attempt happening -- something that most users have trouble noticing. You only need a single token for an arbitrary number of sites. In many cases, you can leave the token permanently installed in your computer without compromising its security guarantees. The token is dead-simple to use. All you have to do is push a single button, when the site asks for the second factor. You can have multiple tokens, if you want a backup token for account recovery or if you own multiple computers. Any user can buy their own token from a vendor of their choice.
And if site (e.g. your financial institution or SSA) wants to provide tokens for its clients, cheap entry-level tokens cost less than $10. In fact, I suspect you could buy them for around $1 a piece, if you placed an order on the scale of what the SSA needs.
FIDO U2F is of course not perfect. But that can be said about all security products. There is no such thing as perfect security. But these tokens are much more secure than pretty much all alternatives, they are super easy to use, and they are dirt cheap.
There are plenty of great second factor solutions. The better ones are really easy to use and provide a lot more security. But providers don't want roll out fancy new technology, and users are blissfully unaware of how security works, so they want the same thing that they have had for the last couple of decades.
The upshot is that even when second factors are rolled out, we essentially end up with something no more secure than password and pin, whereas there are beautiful solutions such as FIDO U2F that are ignored.
Ideally, everybody should enable U2F token support. It is cheap, probably more secure than most other mainstream 2FA options, and you only need a single token no matter how many sites or accounts you want to secure. It's also much easier to use
You should never run a browser that isn't updated on a regular basis. You shouldn't even run a browser that is updated, but that has an understaffed security team.
Chrome has some of the best security out there. But even with its pretty impressive track record, it does occasionally get hacked. Off the top of my head, I am not aware of an exploit that ever worked against an up-to-date Chromebook. But I might very well be wrong -- in fact, I strongly suspect I am. And you are certainly vulnerable, if you get tricked into installing a shady browser extension.
It's the wild West out there. The internet is a dangerous place. ChromeOS is some of the safest way to access the internet. But it only is safe as long as you always make sure all security bugs are closed immediately. While your Chromebook is supported, this automatically happens in the background all the time. You probably don't even notice it. If it no longer is supported, things go bad pretty quickly.
It's all Open Source and under a very liberal license at that. Also, the hardware can be unlocked super easily. That's officially supported by Google. So, nothing else is really needed for somebody else to take over, if they so choose.
On the other hand, it's five year old hardware. You can pick up a replacement for less than $200. And that will be a better device. So, I don't see a particularly big and active community around supporting the old devices.
Just save the contents and put them back if the user presses forward. I thought only Firefox devs were a waste of oxygen, but it seems they were merely copying Chrome devs.
There are two problems with this.
1) The Chrome team has actually studied how many people use backspace to navigate; and it's a really small number of users. So, for the vast majority of users, the old behavior is 100% unexpected, and requiring navigation "forward" is at best irritating, at worst something that they don't know how to do (e.g. my parents don't even realize there is a "forward" action). Why make something needlessly surprising, confusing, and frustrating for the majority of your users, when you can fix it by disabling navigation on backspace?
2) Saving the entire state of a web page is suprisingly challenging these days. Web pages literally have hundreds of mega bytes of state, they have worker threads that need to be snapshot'd, and they change server-side state, when navigation happens. For basic web sites, saving state might be possible. For modern complex web sites it just isn't technically feasible -- even if unlimited amounts of memory were available. This gets even worse, if you want to deal with a sequence of multiple backspace keys.
Ultimately, there are several other keyboard shortcuts for backwards navigation. It's not ideal that a small number of users will have to learn that instead of backspace they now have to press ALT-LEFT, but they'll learn. Just as they learned that CTRL-Q doesn't work, but SHIFT-CTRL-Q does. I bet, after a week, most people won't even notice any more.
At this point, it might be cheaper to just get a supported scanner instead. It's not as if scanners are really that expensive any more.
Having said that, we are in a similar situation and our household still has a single Windows 8 machine. The rest is Linux, ChromeOS and a Macbook that for all practical purposes might as well be a Chromebook; it's not as if it ever does anything other than Chrome.
The Windows machine is needed for Photoshop. If there was a viable Photoshop clone for Linux, we would not have any need for Windows. As such, Windows 10 has absolutely zero appeal to us; if anything, it only has downsides compared to Windows 8. We'll continue using Windows 8 as long as it is supported, and then probably just disconnect it from the internet and keep using it for as long as we still need Photoshop.
If you legitimately need Photoshop, then no, a Chromebook is not for you.
But realistically, very few people need Photoshop, nor can they afford it; and if they did, they wouldn't use it on a laptop, but have a properly calibrated monitor in a room with properly controlled lighting.
For everybody else, times have moved on, and web based photo services have gotten surprisingly powerful. For better or for worse, a consumer or even prosumer is often better off using those services, then shelling out mega-bucks to Adobe -- and that's speaking as a user who has bought the Adobe suit, not just once but multiple versions in the last 10 years.
For the last couple of years, I have been taking my Chromebook with me any time I travel; and honestly, it's the better mobile device. We have a couple of powerful laptops at home, a few powerful stationary workstations, and even some server space; but none of those ever leave the house. For that matter, my wife bought a fancy Macbook a while ago, and after having used it for about two years, she admits that she would have been just as happy if not happier with a Chromebook.
And on top of that, Chromebooks are cheaper; they also are zero maintenance. And they are fully disposable. If a Chromebook breaks or is stolen on a trip, I can have Amazon mail me a new one same day, and once I turn it on, I am back to where I left off working with the stolen device. No wonder businesses love Chromebooks.
I believe, with the exception of the printer, the answer is yes to all of your questions.
And if your printer was built in the last couple of years, there is a good chance it supports Google Cloudprint, allowing you to print to it any time your Chromebook is connected to the network. No need for any wires.
If you have an older printer, you'll need a helper application to run on another computer though. So, yes, that's a little awkward but it is a problem that will go away over time, as hardware gets updated.
Miele Vacuums in Germany are power hogs and need 2200W. That's fine, as German power outlets are 240V at 13A. You can draw more than 3000W before tripping the breaker. Try doing that on a 110V/15A outlet and the results won't be so pretty.
It's easy to be powerful, if you don't mind wasting a lot of power. But just watch what's happening right now; the EU smartened up to this game and passed new regulations, limiting vacuums to 1600W. All of a sudden, Miele vacuums don't look all that great any more. But Dyson's are awesome, as they have many years of experience maximizing suction power with much lower electrical power needs.
Most of their vacuums are pretty good. In fact, a huge step up from the non-Dyson models that we used to own. We now have two Dyson vacuums, a bigger conventional model, and the small battery-powered one. The latter gets used several times a day. Quite happy with that; I never before had even seen a battery powered vacuum that wasn't just a bad joke.
As for the hand dryer. Yeah, I agree with you. It's a solution in search of a problem. It just slings bacteria all over the place and doesn't even work all that much better than other commercial hand dryers. I much prefer paper towels. So much more sanitary and easier to use.
Fancy new hair dryer? Hmm, I'll wait until it sells at Costco for a discount and then ask around what other reviewers think. As you said, it's a commodity item.
I feel, this is probably one movie I don't need to watch. As you said, the story is likely to take a back seat to the visual effects.
And maybe, it's just me but seeing the previews, it felt extremely jarring. The visual effects are so much on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. It is glaringly obvious that all the animals and a lot of the background is CGI rather than real objects. And to me it feels very disturbing and distracting. Of course, if there is no story to distract from, then maybe that doesn't matter as much...
I am all for more options. And I definitely can see how a small and affordable hotel room fills a particular niche. But I don't see how this would be direct competition with AirBNB.
When I travel, I book AirBNB because I want an apartment rather than a hotel room. I don't necessarily need the amenities that traditional hotels offer (i.e. front-desk, swimming pool and on-site restaurant), but I do want a multi-room apartment; the ability to use the kitchen; convenient location downtown and close to public transportation; in-unit washer/dryer; included WiFi networking; affordable long-term rental;...
I can find some of these conveniences in hotels, but only after searching a lot and usually for quite a high premium. AirBNB (or its various copy-cats) really don't have much competition from traditional hotels.
I have had an ad blocker in my browser for years. I cancelled cable and only subscribe to streaming services that don't have ads (e.g. Netflix, Amazon) or I buy DVDs outright (for the cost that I save in cable fees, I can buy at least one disk a week and still come out ahead). I haven't read a printed magazine in decades. I literally are pretty much unaware of all current ads.
Having said that, whenever my ad blocker is misconfigured and blocks the text ads from Google searches, I quickly notice and fix things. I only ever get these ads, when I am actively looking to buy something. And that's exactly when I actually appreciate seeing ads.
I find, the "push" model or marketing is highly annoying and not something I'll tolerate; but the "pull" model, where I actively seek out advertisements is very different. This is good news for Google, as I'll still see their ads and even actively click through them; it's not really good news for anybody else, as random display ads on unrelated websites just don't work with this model.
I am not sure what other monetization concept is available for random websites though; they just don't contribute enough to be worth paying, not even in eye balls.
That's the reason why many people who own LEGO bricks are scared of MegaBloks. MegaBloks makes generic bricks that are nominally compatible with LEGO bricks. But in practice, they are built to lower quality standards and tend to attach much more poorly. As small number of MegaBloks in a collection of LEGO bricks can cause a lot of havoc and result in LEGO models that keep falling apart.
And as the bricks look so similar, they are hard to remove from the collection of bricks, once the infestation has happened.
Having said that, I can definitely understand why OP would love to have a 3D printer that can output LEGO-compatible bricks. Every so often, it would be nice to build special-purpose adapter pieces that allow integrating non-LEGO hardware (e.g. a cell phone) into LEGO models. Perfect fit wouldn't necessarily be a strict requirement. And as the adapter is going to look quite unique, there isn't much risk of it accidentally getting confused with a genuine LEGO part.
Slashdot Mirror
Escape meta alternate control shift
If you crank up Viper to its maximum craziness setting, you can enter Emacs and vi commands at the same time. It's glorious, and actually quite nice if you have mild RSI symptoms
Both Apple and Ireland claim that the tax rate always applied to everybody and not just to a specific company. Furthermore, Apple claims to be current on all of their Irish taxes and to, in fact, be Ireland's largest tax payer.
The EU claims that none of these statements are true.
It'll be interesting to see which side is closer to the actual truth once the facts slowly become public.
I'll never understand why Slashdot likes to link to poorly written and misleading summaries, when the original blog post is so much more readable and informative. I suggest everybody skip the "Quartz" article and instead read the original blog post. Thankfully, for once it was in fact included in the Slashdot summary, even if it was downplayed: https://deepmind.com/blog/wave...
Went to a retreat at a monastery in German one time. They immediately told us about the three B's. They has placed the chapel right next to the swimming pool and the bar. You could pray ( Beten), swim ( Baden) and drink ( Bier trinken) all that the same time. Those Catholic monks know how to party.
Don't drink and derive
There is an obvious way to fix this. But it takes a lot of work to change the existing culture, and the transition phase will be painful.
Do what Europe has been doing successfully for decades. Lower the drinking age to 16 years, and raise the driving age to 18 years. Kids will still drink, but the thrill of doing something crazy and/or illegal has long since worn off, by the time they get their drivers licenses and get into college. Also, there is a lot less stigma around drinking. So, calling another adult to give you a ride home is really not a big deal.
I have grown up in this culture (in Germany), and excessive drinking is a lot less of a problem than it is in the US. People still get drunk, don't get me wrong, but hear of far fewer cases of drunk driving and I have a really hard time remembering the last time I heard of anybody going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
You'll be even more fucked if the EU ruling stands. According to what the US government has been saying for the last few days, if Apple ends up paying back taxes in Ireland, the IRS will have to credit them for (part of) that amount. So, Apple would pay even less in the US.
That's why the US, Ireland, and Apple all agree, you can't arbitrarily change tax rules and pick and choose what you happen to like. There are international treaties and all of them are interconnected. They probably should be changed. But that has to be a concerted effort for there not to be bad unintended consequences.
How can T-Mobile differentiate between these, as far as I know the connection to youtube is cryptographically secured.
Even with TLS encrypted HTTPS connections, you can see the domain name of the request. If it says youtube.com, T-Mobile can rate limit the connection to something much slower than what it usually would give you. And the rate limiting forces YouTube to downgrade the video resolution.
So, it's not T-Mobile that selects the lower video resolution, it's YouTube. All T-Mobile does is provide differential network performance based on service; of course, that sounds suspiciously close to a violation of network neutrality. But that's a question for the FCC to decide.
I suspect the reason why this originally didn't work for YouTube, when T-Mobile first starting rolling out BingeOn is the fact that Google is increasingly using HTTP/2.0 which supports multiple streams in a single connection, and it also is often using QUIC which fundamentally looks very different to a HTTP connection over TCP.
SMS and soft-tokens (such as the Google Authenticator cellphone app) are better than nothing. But they don't provide for particularly secure second factors, especially if the web site is a valuable target.
I don't understand why so few sites (pretty much just Google and Github) use FIDO U2F hardware tokens. They are much more secure as the browser can cryptographically verify that there is no phishing attempt happening -- something that most users have trouble noticing. You only need a single token for an arbitrary number of sites. In many cases, you can leave the token permanently installed in your computer without compromising its security guarantees. The token is dead-simple to use. All you have to do is push a single button, when the site asks for the second factor. You can have multiple tokens, if you want a backup token for account recovery or if you own multiple computers. Any user can buy their own token from a vendor of their choice.
And if site (e.g. your financial institution or SSA) wants to provide tokens for its clients, cheap entry-level tokens cost less than $10. In fact, I suspect you could buy them for around $1 a piece, if you placed an order on the scale of what the SSA needs.
FIDO U2F is of course not perfect. But that can be said about all security products. There is no such thing as perfect security. But these tokens are much more secure than pretty much all alternatives, they are super easy to use, and they are dirt cheap.
There are plenty of great second factor solutions. The better ones are really easy to use and provide a lot more security. But providers don't want roll out fancy new technology, and users are blissfully unaware of how security works, so they want the same thing that they have had for the last couple of decades.
The upshot is that even when second factors are rolled out, we essentially end up with something no more secure than password and pin, whereas there are beautiful solutions such as FIDO U2F that are ignored.
Ideally, everybody should enable U2F token support. It is cheap, probably more secure than most other mainstream 2FA options, and you only need a single token no matter how many sites or accounts you want to secure. It's also much easier to use
You should never run a browser that isn't updated on a regular basis. You shouldn't even run a browser that is updated, but that has an understaffed security team.
Chrome has some of the best security out there. But even with its pretty impressive track record, it does occasionally get hacked. Off the top of my head, I am not aware of an exploit that ever worked against an up-to-date Chromebook. But I might very well be wrong -- in fact, I strongly suspect I am. And you are certainly vulnerable, if you get tricked into installing a shady browser extension.
It's the wild West out there. The internet is a dangerous place. ChromeOS is some of the safest way to access the internet. But it only is safe as long as you always make sure all security bugs are closed immediately. While your Chromebook is supported, this automatically happens in the background all the time. You probably don't even notice it. If it no longer is supported, things go bad pretty quickly.
It's all Open Source and under a very liberal license at that. Also, the hardware can be unlocked super easily. That's officially supported by Google. So, nothing else is really needed for somebody else to take over, if they so choose.
On the other hand, it's five year old hardware. You can pick up a replacement for less than $200. And that will be a better device. So, I don't see a particularly big and active community around supporting the old devices.
Just save the contents and put them back if the user presses forward. I thought only Firefox devs were a waste of oxygen, but it seems they were merely copying Chrome devs.
There are two problems with this.
Ultimately, there are several other keyboard shortcuts for backwards navigation. It's not ideal that a small number of users will have to learn that instead of backspace they now have to press ALT-LEFT, but they'll learn. Just as they learned that CTRL-Q doesn't work, but SHIFT-CTRL-Q does. I bet, after a week, most people won't even notice any more.
At this point, it might be cheaper to just get a supported scanner instead. It's not as if scanners are really that expensive any more.
Having said that, we are in a similar situation and our household still has a single Windows 8 machine. The rest is Linux, ChromeOS and a Macbook that for all practical purposes might as well be a Chromebook; it's not as if it ever does anything other than Chrome.
The Windows machine is needed for Photoshop. If there was a viable Photoshop clone for Linux, we would not have any need for Windows. As such, Windows 10 has absolutely zero appeal to us; if anything, it only has downsides compared to Windows 8. We'll continue using Windows 8 as long as it is supported, and then probably just disconnect it from the internet and keep using it for as long as we still need Photoshop.
If you legitimately need Photoshop, then no, a Chromebook is not for you.
But realistically, very few people need Photoshop, nor can they afford it; and if they did, they wouldn't use it on a laptop, but have a properly calibrated monitor in a room with properly controlled lighting.
For everybody else, times have moved on, and web based photo services have gotten surprisingly powerful. For better or for worse, a consumer or even prosumer is often better off using those services, then shelling out mega-bucks to Adobe -- and that's speaking as a user who has bought the Adobe suit, not just once but multiple versions in the last 10 years.
For the last couple of years, I have been taking my Chromebook with me any time I travel; and honestly, it's the better mobile device. We have a couple of powerful laptops at home, a few powerful stationary workstations, and even some server space; but none of those ever leave the house. For that matter, my wife bought a fancy Macbook a while ago, and after having used it for about two years, she admits that she would have been just as happy if not happier with a Chromebook.
And on top of that, Chromebooks are cheaper; they also are zero maintenance. And they are fully disposable. If a Chromebook breaks or is stolen on a trip, I can have Amazon mail me a new one same day, and once I turn it on, I am back to where I left off working with the stolen device. No wonder businesses love Chromebooks.
I believe, with the exception of the printer, the answer is yes to all of your questions.
And if your printer was built in the last couple of years, there is a good chance it supports Google Cloudprint, allowing you to print to it any time your Chromebook is connected to the network. No need for any wires.
If you have an older printer, you'll need a helper application to run on another computer though. So, yes, that's a little awkward but it is a problem that will go away over time, as hardware gets updated.
Miele Vacuums in Germany are power hogs and need 2200W. That's fine, as German power outlets are 240V at 13A. You can draw more than 3000W before tripping the breaker. Try doing that on a 110V/15A outlet and the results won't be so pretty.
It's easy to be powerful, if you don't mind wasting a lot of power. But just watch what's happening right now; the EU smartened up to this game and passed new regulations, limiting vacuums to 1600W. All of a sudden, Miele vacuums don't look all that great any more. But Dyson's are awesome, as they have many years of experience maximizing suction power with much lower electrical power needs.
Most of their vacuums are pretty good. In fact, a huge step up from the non-Dyson models that we used to own. We now have two Dyson vacuums, a bigger conventional model, and the small battery-powered one. The latter gets used several times a day. Quite happy with that; I never before had even seen a battery powered vacuum that wasn't just a bad joke.
As for the hand dryer. Yeah, I agree with you. It's a solution in search of a problem. It just slings bacteria all over the place and doesn't even work all that much better than other commercial hand dryers. I much prefer paper towels. So much more sanitary and easier to use.
Fancy new hair dryer? Hmm, I'll wait until it sells at Costco for a discount and then ask around what other reviewers think. As you said, it's a commodity item.
He said, no one ever listens to him
I feel, this is probably one movie I don't need to watch. As you said, the story is likely to take a back seat to the visual effects.
And maybe, it's just me but seeing the previews, it felt extremely jarring. The visual effects are so much on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. It is glaringly obvious that all the animals and a lot of the background is CGI rather than real objects. And to me it feels very disturbing and distracting. Of course, if there is no story to distract from, then maybe that doesn't matter as much...
I am all for more options. And I definitely can see how a small and affordable hotel room fills a particular niche. But I don't see how this would be direct competition with AirBNB.
When I travel, I book AirBNB because I want an apartment rather than a hotel room. I don't necessarily need the amenities that traditional hotels offer (i.e. front-desk, swimming pool and on-site restaurant), but I do want a multi-room apartment; the ability to use the kitchen; convenient location downtown and close to public transportation; in-unit washer/dryer; included WiFi networking; affordable long-term rental; ...
I can find some of these conveniences in hotels, but only after searching a lot and usually for quite a high premium. AirBNB (or its various copy-cats) really don't have much competition from traditional hotels.
I have had an ad blocker in my browser for years. I cancelled cable and only subscribe to streaming services that don't have ads (e.g. Netflix, Amazon) or I buy DVDs outright (for the cost that I save in cable fees, I can buy at least one disk a week and still come out ahead). I haven't read a printed magazine in decades. I literally are pretty much unaware of all current ads.
Having said that, whenever my ad blocker is misconfigured and blocks the text ads from Google searches, I quickly notice and fix things. I only ever get these ads, when I am actively looking to buy something. And that's exactly when I actually appreciate seeing ads.
I find, the "push" model or marketing is highly annoying and not something I'll tolerate; but the "pull" model, where I actively seek out advertisements is very different. This is good news for Google, as I'll still see their ads and even actively click through them; it's not really good news for anybody else, as random display ads on unrelated websites just don't work with this model.
I am not sure what other monetization concept is available for random websites though; they just don't contribute enough to be worth paying, not even in eye balls.
That's the reason why many people who own LEGO bricks are scared of MegaBloks. MegaBloks makes generic bricks that are nominally compatible with LEGO bricks. But in practice, they are built to lower quality standards and tend to attach much more poorly. As small number of MegaBloks in a collection of LEGO bricks can cause a lot of havoc and result in LEGO models that keep falling apart.
And as the bricks look so similar, they are hard to remove from the collection of bricks, once the infestation has happened.
Having said that, I can definitely understand why OP would love to have a 3D printer that can output LEGO-compatible bricks. Every so often, it would be nice to build special-purpose adapter pieces that allow integrating non-LEGO hardware (e.g. a cell phone) into LEGO models. Perfect fit wouldn't necessarily be a strict requirement. And as the adapter is going to look quite unique, there isn't much risk of it accidentally getting confused with a genuine LEGO part.