I absolutely agree with that from a technical perspective, but in typical usage, the users won't notice any difference.
To be honest, I think uBo almost become a cult (which is nothing wrong, to be clear). It has lots of very opinionated development progress happened/happening to it, and most of them are irrelevant for majority of users (even the "power" users). And if I dare to say, it's at the cost of its UX.
For example, a few years ago, uBo disabled the ability to "greenlight" a domain (i.e. adding a whitelist dynamic rule) by simply clicking in the (advanced) popup. The official reason is that it's the most misused features, which is true, but it makes legitimate use of it (to whitelist a 3rd-party domain for a specific site because otherwise the site is broken) very inconvenient.
And if you ask about it, they (people in related forums like reddit) tell you "well you should never use it. NOOP should be sufficient. If not, the rules are wrong and you should report to the rule author(s)." This is cool but it didn't solve my immediate problem that a site I want to visit is broken by uBo.
I learned later, again from uBo subreddit, that you can double press ctrl to temporarily enable this feature back -- which is more than enough for me -- but how the hell do you even discover this?
And I never remembered what the two columns for adding dynamic rules are supposed to be -- since there is no headers.
I'm a huge fan of 11-year-old CPUs. 2013 was the last year AMD released processors without the PSP. Not fit for every task, but for most general computing it's indistinguishable from the latest hardware. I like having a computer where everything is accessible. 2013 was also the last year NVIDIA released GPUs without signed firmware.
Libgen still uses torrents primarily for preservation. It also hosts on IPFS but that is more for access, and there are very few IPFS seeders.
We tried IPFS for a bit but found it not stable and usable enough for preservation purposes. We're closely watching IPFS development and hope that it will get there, since it would be wonderful to merge the preservation and access use cases in one system.
Each their own, that's mine. Note that this is not a tech user or developper list, but the list of what I install on any new windows pc, including those at work etc ...
7zip (open any archive)
VLC (open any audio/video file)
IrfanView (+ the "all plugins" installer on the same page, open any picture file)
SumatraPDF (read PDFs)
Libreoffice (to open any office files)
NAPS2 (easy scan, and split/merge/... PDFs)
Ditto (give your clipboard a memory)
Everything (an instant file search that works)
TeraCopy (replace windows copy with queue, queues, add files to the queue instead of starting a second parallel copy, pause that works, ...)
Powertoys (so many to list ... mass rename file easily, screen ruler, text extractor ...)
If it's appropriate : Qbittorent (clean torrent client)
Nvidia graphic card ? NVCleaninstall, so you can install just the clean driver you need
Windows 10 or 11 ? O&O Shut Up (to disable all the telemetry and onedrive in one click, there are plenty alternatives but I sort of like this one)
Windows 11 ? ExplorerPatcher to remove suggestions in the start menu and the new and terrible castrated contextual menu
And of course your browser of choice and extensions
In ten minutes you have a computer that feels much more smart and usable. There are plenty of great software out there, but I feel like many what to install lists are very topical or include software you won't use in many cases or once every 6 months, so this is my short list of what you will use essentially every time you use the computer.
Author here. Yes, Jeremy Howard and fast.ai was one of the inspirations for this! I'd actually be curious what he thinks of the project if he ever sees it.
I've done a lot with the classic IBM 1403 line printer. The basic idea is that a rotating chain has the characters on it and zips around at 90.3 inches per second. The printer has 132 hammers, one for each column on the page. When the right character lines up with a hammer, the hammer fires, printing the character. This lets the printer output a full line in 80 milliseconds.
The details of the print chain process are much more complex than you'd expect (so feel free to skip this paragraph). The computer has to constantly check to see when a hammer should fire. One important thing is that only one hammer lines up with a character at a time. (It's physically impossible to fire all the hammers at once.) During this time, the computer reads the corresponding character from memory and fires the hammer if it matches. To make this work, the chain/hammer timing has to match the core memory cycle timing. The chain spacing is very slightly different from the hammer spacing, so you end up with a vernier effect where the aligned character position changes much faster than the chain actually moves. I made an animation that might make things clearer: http://righto.com/ibm1401/printchain.html
Another thing that makes the printer fast is it has a hydraulic motor to advance the paper very quickly. Inconveniently, the printer at the Computer History Museum is leaking hydraulic fluid, so we need to mop it up regularly. (That's one advantage of your home printer.)
The print quality of the 1403 line printer was much better than competitors because it used a chain instead of typebars or a drum. In particular, if the timing was a bit off, the chain caused the character to be shifted left or right. Other approaches caused the character to be shifted up or down. A left-right shift is barely noticeable, while an up-down shift makes the text look wavy and awful.
By the way, a laser printer (e.g. Brother) is a good choice for a home printer if you want more speed and don't like the expense of ink.
I worked in climate policy for awhile. I got out of it because I lost hope. I believe our governments have lost hope also. Covid taught us that if they inflict the necessary pain to control carbon, our governments will be consumed by populist anger. Only the Chinese system appears to have any hope of controlling people’s behavior that much without riots. And what a terrifying system! Even their control began to slip after a few years of zero Covid.
We will just have to deal with the consequences while we try to innovative our way out of this mess. It’s made me a AI accelerationist. Of the two civilizational dooms, I’ll take my chances with the computers.
> If coffee decreases the possibility of myocardial infarction and it is no longer harmful from a carcinogenicity point of view, it is the time to acknowledge Gustav III (1746-1792 CE) (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016 ▶), the adventures king of Sweden’s, pioneer experiment on coffee safety as the first documented “randomized clinical trial” in medical history.
Knowyourmeme is very late to the meme game. Entire civilizations of memes flourished and decayed on 4chan, fark, Slashdot, YTMND, and the bare metal internet long ago.
Maybe not a big thing for everyone, but for the nature-loving nerds at the intersection of computers and mechanics this has personally been the most exciting hobby for the last 5 years.
The whole MTB industry is exploding with innovation, just recently Pinion released a motor with integrated gearbox getting rid of the 100-year old derailleur.
Better battery tech and sleeker integration/improved weight is creating some truly amazing new mountain bikes and the experience of riding one is quite novel compared to anything in the past.
For the uninitiated, it's not like riding a motorbike. These bikes are pedelecs meaning you only get extra assistance when pedaling (there is no throttle).
The best analogy is the feeling of being a bionic man with extreme strength and stamina. The first time riding up a steep hill brought the same sensation as riding a bike for the first time as a kid.
The same is available in Chrome. I made a list of shortcuts I use here [0] -- copying a few favorites below:
shortcut: "aw", lets you type: "aw s3", "aw iam", etc.
https://console.aws.amazon.com/%s
shortcut: "amzn", searches the retail side
https://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=%s
shortcut: "gm", searches through gmail (change the 0 if you use multiple accounts)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/%s
shortcut: "maps", searches google maps
https://www.google.com/maps/search/%s/
shortcut: "img", searches google images
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%s
shortcut: "wp", goes directly to the article if it exists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
shortcut: "yt", searches youtube
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s
1. The Water Test: Take a glass of warm water and add a teaspoon of your turmeric powder to it. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes. If the turmeric powder settles down, it is pure. If it doesn’t settle to the bottom and leaves a dark yellow colour, it is adulterated.
2. The Palm Test: Take a pinch of your turmeric powder and rub it into the palm of your hand for a few seconds, then turn your palm over. Pure turmeric will stick to your palm and leave a yellow stain, whereas adulterated turmeric will mostly fall off.
I can recommend watching the entire film run backwards. The music sounds approximately the same, and it turns it into a feel-good story showing assembly lines pulling cars apart, pollution being sucked into factories and mining vehicles burying ores.
It took only 3 guesses for ChatGPT to get close to the correct answer. Google was hopeless.
-- I believe the correct translation for "sissimajoite" from Finnish to English is "guerrilla camouflage". "Sissi" means "guerrilla" or "insurgent", and "majoite" refers to "camouflage" or "camouflaging".
And finally, in which three mathematicians heroically attempt to explain asymptotic analysis to (septuagenarian novelist and cultural broadcaster) Melvyn:
The fact of the matter is I'm not saying "don't use a professional". I'm against the very concept of how convoluted everything is in this world- and nearly everything is created in ways that benefit people who make up let's say the top 15% of earners.
I'm not oblivious to any of these things, I have an econ, accounting & M.S. finance degree. I have a CPA (never practiced).
And you know what? I see this shit all the time in my line of work. I've been lucky enough to do more of the technology/programming side of the industry I'm in so I don't kill myself on the meaningless garbage that the people I'm creating stuff for actually do.. but I see this shit all the time.
Structures or laws being set up constantly to avoid tax that your normal person has absolutely no way to use. Self employed people setting up S-Corps so they don't have to pay into social security because they will be rich enough they don't need it themselves so why pay into the system to help others. People in other countries setting up US structures so they can pay a lower tax rate here than their home country while they get to reap all the benefits. LLCs being set up in delaware so you don't have to pay state taxes when one could easily argue you operate there if anyone checked. People throwing money into dividend paying stocks just because of a low tax. Reducing long term capital gains to stupidly low tax levels.
I mean I can go on and on. Your average person GETS ALMOST NONE OF THESE BENEFITS.
I'm not saying all of the stuff is bad or not needed. But the vast majority is set up so people who already make way more than the average person don't have to pay their fair share.
So look- I'm more being general here. I'm not specifically talking about this case as much as I'm just bitching about how the world works. It just disgusts me at this point. What one calls "optimization", at this point in my life I call it taking advantage.
Hey brother hang in there. My grandpa didn’t have his first kid until he was 68!! And his wife was in her young 20s. And they were in love till the day he died in his late 80s. He wasn’t any kind of programmer or rich or anything. It’s an atypical story but the point is do not EVER think the best of your life is BEHIND you! One of the most foolish and important of all emotions is hope. Hope is about taking a look at the data and realizing that the situation is grim but choosing to proceed as if life has good things in store for you anyway. Beethoven’s 9th symphony was written when he was stone cold deaf and he wouldn’t ever get to hear a single note of the music, and yet he wrote it anyway as a big middle finger to the cruel hand that fate dealt him. If you look at his writings from the time, they were pretty dark. That’s why Ode to Joy brings me to tears darn near every time I hear it. Hope has a way of making its own luck, if you are open to the possibilities that life puts before you and you don’t hang onto the wheel too tightly. Last thing to remember is that YOUR story is beautiful, even the tragic parts, because it is your experience. None of us have any idea what we are “supposed” to be doing here. No one’s journey is more valuable than anyone else’s. And the sad parts of being human are part of the experience too. Hang in there man. There is so much beauty out there for you to discover, out there and within.
Goats are also a harbinger. They can and will eat any last remaining plant matter in an area, tipping it fully over to desert.
It’s often overstated as goats being destroyers. They aren’t or don’t have to be. The goats are the agent of destruction, but the herders are the actual destroyers.
For the restoration of the loess plateau in China, they mandated that goats had to be corralled instead of ranged, to allow the restoration to get a foothold instead of ending up as the most expensive goat meat ever.
As parents we wanted to be one of the better ones. A while back, we started with Bringing up Bébé, and since then learnt How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk; we were even Prepared while Reviving Ophelia. This year, we realized, we want to just settle on being A Good Enough Parent.
They actually store multiple copies. They even use IPFS to store it over decentralized network.
But copyright is the main issue we don't see many services like open library or internet archive.
Rest in peace Aaron Swartz
- Niksen (Dutch)
- Sisu (Finnish)
- Döstädning (Swedish)
- Lagom (Swedish)
- Réussir sans forcer (French)
- Raising Self-Reliant Children (German)
- Wabi Sabi (Japanese)
I wonder what other unique cultural concepts HN users have come across (perhaps from their own culture)?