It's interesting (at least to me) because it's different from anything else out there. The way it runs, the way it is compiled and the language itself are nearly unique. It's also easy to bootstrap on very small machines and fairly easy to implement. It's the light saber of programming languages, "a more elegant language for a more elegant time". But then, that could just be the nostalgia talking...
So, I'm sure this idea has holes all over it, but how about a very simple service that you log into with your PGP public key, then would allow you to post encrypted messages to other PGP public keys and retrieve messages posted to your public key. It could be fully anonymous, depending on your choice of keys. It would be very similar to the mixmaster remailers, except it wouldn't actual mail anything as it wouldn't have any identifiable information other than the public key.
I have a surface go, the 8gb version, and am very happy with it. I've left it running Windows 10 home, but installed the linux subsystem which works quite nicely. You'd think the keyboard would be a weak point, but it's not as bad to use as it looks like it would be. And it runs the games I care about (Civ 6, Kerbal, Subnautica, etc) well enough that I can enjoy them. It's lacking in ports, having just a single USB C, but a hub with a couple of USB A ports, a USB C, HDMI and ethernet only runs about $60 and isn't very big. All in all, I've been really happy with it, it fits in a small bag, will charge off the same USB C charger my phone uses if needed (albeit slowly) and is useful as a tablet for just surfing the web on or watching Netflix.
Shoot, this is how I recapture our dog when he gets loose. Chasing him is no good, he thinks that's a game, so I just collapse on the sidewalk and yell for him to come help. He trots right back over to me.
Years ago, when I was doing laboratory programming, I wrote a set of c++ classes for numbers with units. It tracked units through the calculations (and managed significant figures). It even allowed for such stuff as dividing mass by volume to return a density or generating a volume by multiplying three lengths together. It was very useful for the task at hand, which was flowmeter calibration.
The article may apply to heavily urban areas, but in more rural areas, Amazon is the only game in town besides getting in the car and heading to the local Wal-Mart. I can't see most of these localized delivery services getting national traction simply because it doesn't make economic sense in rural/suburban areas, the population density isn't high enough.
I try to balance development time versus research and learning time. When you go to use a library, you have to consider the time it takes to determine which libraries exists to solve your problem and evaluate them to determine which matches your project best. Then, you have to decide whether the additional dependenc(y|ies)is worth the development time saved. Like everything else in software development, it's a balancing act. Having said that, as you get older, and have worked in the field longer, you find yourself less and less willing to reinvent the wheel and more willing to just use someone else's code.
I'll be sad to see Dr. Dobbs go, as it's been there almost my entire career. Unfortunately, though, magazines (and their web versions) have become less and less relevant through the year.
We let my (now 7.5 y/o) son start using a tablet when he was about that age. But it wasn't "his", we allowed it mostly in the car (we live in a rural area and it's a long way to anywhere) and limited the games on it. Now, it's a lot easier, with the Kindle Fire tablets, you can set up FreeTime which allows setting time limits for different things and can require stuff like reading books for an hour before you can play games. With regular Android tablets, you can set up a limited user and control what apps are accessible to that user, it doesn't enforce time limits, but simply taking the tablet away from the child works pretty well for that :). He's getting his first real computer this year (an older Dell laptop) with Linux on it, I'm planning on teaching him the bare essentials and letting him figure the rest out himself (and doing some filtering at the router for that MAC address).
Very interesting, although it seems to be broken at the moment. It connects and then just kind of hangs (connecting with the latest SSH client in arch). It's a cool concept though.