allenc

That's really interesting. Hmm... it's too bad that there's no easy way to try out the keyboard and its unique switches before committing. But it's intriguing nonetheless.

Can you share how long you're looking to run the preorder/early bird special?

I've built about 10 mechanical keyboards so far, including a bunch of split ergo ones and low profile variants too. From that, I know the layout matters a lot, as well as the switches themselves; the programability and other features to me are nice but ultimately can be worked around.

I'm curious about the switches you're using. On the tech specs it says: "Dual steel arm scissor switch w/ retention spring, 40gf actuation force"

Are they custom switches then? If so, are they most similar to current Magic Keyboard switch feel, or something Choc or MX low profile, or their own thing altogether?

That is a silly amount of detail that in many ways is what Apple design is known for.

Yeah, it's about how Windows has .msi installers, whereas for MacOS it's a .dmg where you copy the exec binary (which itself is a folder) into the /Applications folder.

Well, it's trying to emulate the now-deprecated Arc Browser, with a bunch of built-in functionality that's hard to get natively in Chrome. Arc's been degrading slowly over time, though, as the Browser Company moved on to their new AI-enabled browser Dia.

I've been messing around with this as well, and there are a few good options now, if you're willing to self-host services:

- calibre-web, as a pure web front end to the calibre db

- Calibre Web Automated, which is a rewrite of the app, with a better web UI, that is faster and adds functionality

- Grimmory, a Java-based book mgmt. app w/ a web front end too

- BookOrbit, similar to Grimmory but written in Node and seems to scale better w/ 100k+ book libraries

The better way to get books onto KOReader is via connecting to these apps' OPDS feeds. Wireless, and most of these other apps have better library organization.

Some thoughts I had about how the ease of computing, along with the complexity of online accounts and setups are making it really difficult for the next generation to understand what's going on.

Careful consideration is losing out to parabolic progress.

Migrating my blog from WordPress → Ghost, made easier with a bit of Claude-assisted vibe scripting.

https://allenc.com/ -- My blog, mostly on eng. management topics plus other personal interests, occasionally submitted on HN.