al_borland

Kagi has a news site/app that updates once per day with the highlights from various categories of news.

I would imagine one could take something like that, and have program fetch it each morning, format it nicely, and print out a front page overview of what's going on. Just pick up the paper from the printer each morning.

This idea might be fine for a front page, but would fall apart when you start getting into long articles and think pieces. You'd be burning through a lot of paper.

I found an archive of their app story entry with more screenshots, linked from the archive of the developer's site.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131020160134/https://itunes.ap...

I had one of these as well. It was pretty useful in the days when my HHD was 20GB and regularly filled up.

It sounds awful, yet I’m still curious how it would taste.

I can't help buy think the Vision Pro should have been based on an iPhone instead of the Mac.

The latest Pro model iPhone weighs only about 22% of the Vision Pro + battery pack. The Vision Pro battery alone weighs more than the iPhone 18 Pro Max (with it's integrated battery).

Certainly, by putting the phone components in a larger enclosure, the thermals could be better managed over a phone being being used directly. Not to mention the thermal improvements that have been made it more recent iPhones.

With how locked down the Vision Pro is, it felt more akin to the iPhone or iPad anyway, so trying to classify it as a PC replacement always felt off.

I'm surprised Ryan wasn't on the list. Traditionally a boys name, but I know at least 3 women named Ryan. Maybe it hasn't reached a tipping point yet.

It's the same way in the US. That's why they were saying to just buy any TV (which will almost certainly be a smart TV), then just treat it like a dumb TV by not connecting it to the internet.

I was able to disable a bunch of stuff on my LG so I never actually see the WebOS interface anymore.

I think a chatbot or voice is a horrible interface for most things. There is 0 chance for discoverability, so the application's function is limited by the user's imagination. Most people aren't going to think about the various things a program could solve for them. Even with a UI, most users only use a small fraction of the available options. Without some visual cue to let them know features exist, I'd bet that most users would use even less.

My day job is automation stuff within a large organization. Most people, even within a technical organization, don't seem to think about how the computer can solve problems for them. The other day I used Claude to turn a massive csv dump of data into a dashboard to see trends over time. I don't see other people doing that.. but if Excel had a button for it, I'm sure they would do it.

I went down the watch rabbit hole for a while. When I was looking for a travel watch, I was stubbornly looking for a mechanical watch. I also wanted it to handle the issue that arises with countries like India, which are 30 minutes off all the other time zones. This was a nearly impossible task, and prices grew to the point where I didn't think I would even feel comfortable traveling with such a watch.

I stewed with this problem for the better part of a decade, without a solution.

I then stumbled across the Casio AE1200, their world timer. As I thought about it, this was the perfect choice. With a 10 year battery, I could just grab it and go (changing the battery whenever I renew my passport), I didn't have to deal with setting a bunch of complications, because the quartz movement just kept it going all the time. It solved the IST problem. The low cost meant that I could travel without having to worry about my watch... if something happened, oh well, get another one. Along with that, I wouldn't make me a target for pickpockets. I had been so caught up in watch culture that I didn't realize being cheap could be a feature in the right context.

I've had it for about 3 years now and still smile every time I wear it. Sure, it's a cheap Casio I picked up at some random retail store... but it took me 10 years to grow into the person who could appreciate it and it solved a problem that I thought about way too much for the previous decade. It's one of my cheapest watches, if not the cheapest, yet I think it's my favorite one.

A tip for anyone in the market: There is a lot of ugly text on this watch. It can be erased with an eraser. I used a white plastic eraser. At first it doesn't seem like it's doing anything, and then the text is gone. This is much better than the chemical solutions some videos online use.

I was tempted to upgrade the bracelet, case, and crystal. There are options for metal and sapphire from 3rd parties, but if I did that, I'd then be more worried about losing it, which is an anti-feature when traveling. I have intentionally kept it stock other than erasing the text on the case itself to stay true to that realization I had a few years ago.

And credit where credit is due, I think it was the Talking Watches episode with John Mayer and Ed Sheeran that made me realize cheap was a feature. They were showing all these crazy one-of-one watches they had custom-made from AP and alike, but they both just traveled with a G-Shock for some peace of mind.

Doing a quick search shows me many implementations of hacker news in the terminal.

I never used Spaces much.

Apple was actually last to the party on that. Linux had virtual desktops for years at that point, and Windows had them as well through Microsoft PowerToys. I’m pretty sure I was running it on Windows 2000.

I’d go with Tiger (10.4) for peak OS X, personally.

I guess this means I’ll be hanging onto my M1 Pro for another year and seeing what M7 has to offer.

This is the first time I’ve ever kept a computer this long and never really felt like it needed to be upgraded. I suppose this is a bit of a gift and a curse for Apple.

You just explained it. Extra cables, potential mounting hardware… when disassembled is also more to pack up, move, and set back up.

You might not think it’s much harder, but it’s harder.

Nanotexture is an option now, to get a matte finish and cut down on reflections.

Same. I don’t care if it’s thicker to accommodate the camera system.they can make the whole phone as thick as the cameras to remove the camera bump, and fill all that extra space with a huge battery and better speakers. Sounds perfect to me.

This creates a negative feedback loop. Developers release a product and if they don’t instantly get millions of users, the project is abandoned. This teaches users not to bother with new software and services that won’t stick around, making it even less likely that the project will survive the first year.

I used to sign up for new stuff all the time, but I don’t bother anymore. I don’t trust anything will still exist in 6 months.

With TV shows I have a soft rule that I don’t bother starting a show until it’s at least 3 seasons. I’m thinking of taking a similar approach in software, where I won’t bother with anything that hasn’t been actively supported and updated for at least 3 years. If the developer isn’t committed to the idea, why should I commit as a user or customer?

While there are certainly benefits to lowering the barrier of entry to starting a company or releasing software. I think the lack of commitment and seriousness on the part of those releasing it is a major drawback for users. In a brick and mortar business, owners put a lot on the line to get up and running, they expect not to make a profit for several years, and fight like hell to make it work. Meanwhile in modern software, it’s just a bunch of people throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping something with stick long enough for a 7+ figure exit.

Agents still seem pretty bad at architecture. I still need to stay very much in control of how something is done, even if I have an LLM write some code here and there.

For stand-alone bits of code where I don’t really care about the implementation, I will let an agent go wild. But for production code in the legacy code base, not a chance I’m doing that.

I wish this was somehow listed as a separate line item with the price, assuming prices will normalize at some point. I don’t want these prices to be considered the new normal, even after memory prices come down. I think transparency in the pricing would help with that.

Half the time their mid-year fresh is just a new color, with a huge marketing push. If everyone has a case, colors become a moot point.

I also don’t think I’ve ever seen an Apple exec use a case, as it would imply the phones are durable and a case is needed, which they don’t want to convey. (Bumpers for antenna-gate aside)

I don't like when they force a storage upgrade just to get a matte screen. I have no need for more storage, but would like a matte screen. As a $100 upgrade for nanotexture, it already seems steep, but forcing it to a $200 upgrade due to a needless storage bump is too much to ignore.

I also question what is required for nanotexture. I read the iPhone Duo has this in a replaceable screen protector, effectively. A replacement, under AppleCare is $15. Are we being charged $100 for a factory installed screen protector? If so, why does that need to be tied to certain levels of storage to reduce SKUs?

Apple added emulator support a couple of years ago. Delta works great.

I’ve seen and used terminal applications from the App Store that seem to run a Linux VM locally, which would check off items 2 and 4.

I watched the “Can your iPhone do this?” video, assuming that was the coolest one. The others seemed like they’d just be showing the exploit.

It seemed like a silly party trick with no practical purpose, and required the terminal to reset things back to normal so the phone was useful again. Why does anyone want this? Surely there are better uses than what was demoed?

I used to jailbreak during the first few years of iPhone. I remember being able to drag out from the bottom right corner of the screen to have a launcher, similar to the Dock, but with more stuff. But over time, the iOS got more features and the argument for jailbreaking became less compelling. This is especially true now that so much sensitive information is in our phones… so I trust all this stuff that effectively has root?

I find it odd Arc has AI garbage when Dia was supposed to be their AI browser. If they were going to put AI in Arc anyway, they should have stuck with one browser instead of rug pulling everyone right as it started to actually take off.

I’m pretty sure I saw more Arc videos posted after Dia than before. None of the people seemed to be aware that the browser they were pushing was effectively end of life.

I built a wallpaper manager for macOS.

The sidebar has a tree view of the filesystem, defaulting to where I keep my wallpapers (adjustable in the settings). The wallpapers are shown as thumbnails on the right, size adjustable.

There is an option to show them recursively, so all the wallpapers from subfolders show up in one view, rather than having to navigate the folders. There are options for favorites and a few filters.

There is a preview mode, which is invoked by hitting the space bar, like a custom QuickLook. If previews in full screen, with a mock menu bar and dock, so I can see what it will actually look like before setting it. In this view I can also use the arrows to flip through the wallpapers and use shortcuts to favorite them, or apply it as the wallpaper.

I have some planned updates to it, but thats the core functionality at the moment.

I’ve had sites reject my Google Voice number and require my actual cell phone number.

Restarting is more common than powering off.

When my boss sent me a 10 page email of AI ideas on how to complete our upcoming project, I asked him for his prompt. The prompt is what he really cares about and what I needed to know to make sure the projects meets his expectations. The prompt was 2-3 sentences.

Bugs happen, but when the public acceptance of a product hinges on public trust, and the public already doesn’t trust you… these things can’t happen.

As it stands, I don’t think Zuck could ever rebuild the trust needed for me to accept these products. Every time this happens, the can gets kicked even further down the road.

I saw his interview with Joanna Stern where he talked about wanting to build trust, and the encryption in WhatsApp, and how different platforms have different assumptions on sharing and trust. But as long as Facebook has the business model Facebook has, I don’t see how Meta can also be the trust company. Things need to drastically change.

The budget and the debt are the two things I really care about and this administration has handled it horribly. The 25 years have all been bad, but at some point someone had to do something about it before it spirals out of control, right? It seems like we’re at the tipping point.