this is a problem. we make photos of the pages. i think there should be always a digital option when you have a physical book.

It sounds like the major issue here is the access to information. It's not the fault of the medium but rather the IP rights around it. Books are expensive because the text book industry needs their cut. Schools need to protect the expensive books because children can and will impulsively throw one off a bridge on their walk home.

The digital editions are restricted due to IP, so you can't have an infinitely copyable version for reference at home to solve the issue of children being destructive sometimes. So you end up with the worst of both worlds.

We could theoretically teach kids to convert cubits to feet and give them a translated version of the same ancient egyptian geometry textbooks used to educate the architects of the pyramids. Triangles aren't new. Why has there not been an opensource/creative commons math textbook made available to all schools with a issues board for crowd sourcing correctness?

This could be done with discrete periods of history, sciences, math, etc. We really don't need the McGraw Hill 2026 Florida Patriot's edition of the 18th century American history textbook.

Open content textbooks are widely available, it's just a matter of adoption by the students.

> it's just a matter of adoption by the students.

I don't think it's the students who are signing textbook deals.

Or every student have the books they need, and are free to bring them home.

I don’t know. The only good solution would be if all messaging apps used the same protocol so everyone could be reached. But right now it is a mess. We can’t even message each other easily. It’s ridiculous. But what am I talking about? We can’t even agree on the same measurement units.

> The only good solution would be if all messaging apps used the same protocol so everyone could be reached.

That's exactly what XMPP was created to solve, an open standard that could be implemented by anyone. For a while it even looked like there was a chance for that to work out. Whatsapp, Google Talk, Cisco Jabber, and some others used to be based on XMPP.

Unfortunately it didn't quite pan out that way.

Seems like the smartphone revolution was the hardest thing for XMPP. Push notifications and voice chat were both "batteries not included."

The first time Trump was elected was a shock, but now we understand. It wasn't a simple mistake. I have only few customers who use Google Workspace for their emails and only one who uses Dropbox for files. Initially (about 2002) companies moved away from U.S.-based cloud services. However, now I have an increasing number of customers who want to cancel cloud services entirely. But for my customers, there is no alternative to Windows.

this is the way

I live in Berlin, and I have only one friend who has a Facebook account but doesn't even use it.

But they probably all use Instagram.

Instagram is for DUMB people! Let's catch up on WhatsApp.

a true alternative has not to be hosted in a country of the Five Eyes group. I switched to mailbox.org and I am really happy.