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This Is Why Software Folks Should Not Design Hardware

From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, October 09, 2025 01:44:53

A crew at Google Japan has come up with this totally mad keyboard
design, based on -- of all things -- dials from ancient-style rotary
phones <https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/keyboards/crazy-google-japan-keyboard-design-switches-keys-for-dials-the-gboard-dial-edition-shows-why-the-software-team-isnt-allowed-to-design-hardware>.

I can?t see it being of any practical use whatsoever. But if you want
to build your own, they have made the plans publicly available.

The thing with rotary dials is, you could never operate them fast
enough to get RSI. Or so I thought. But now I suppose somebody will
prove me wrong. ;)

--- PyGate Linux v1.0
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

From Eli the Bearded@3:633/10 to All on Friday, October 10, 2025 05:31:09

In comp.misc, Lawrence DOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

A crew at Google Japan has come up with this totally mad keyboard
design, based on -- of all things -- dials from ancient-style rotary
phones <https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/keyboards/crazy-google-japan-keyboard-design-switches-keys-for-dials-the-gboard-dial-edition-shows-why-the-software-team-isnt-allowed-to-design-hardware>.

Foone made several dial based keyboards, amount other craziness[*]. Unfortunately the images went away with the twitter account. They are
listed here, and the URLs may be saved at internet archive:

https://wiki.foone.org/w/Hardware_Projects

It's possible some of them are in the tumblr account but Foone does not
seem good at reposting, so unlikely to be found on Mastodon or Bluesky.

Elijah
------
[*] recalls in particular the cube keyboard, with keys on six faces

--- PyGate Linux v1.0
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

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