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freedsoftware

Re:Org markup should replace Markdown on Monday June 23, 2025 @03:51AM (#44353417)
Everything you said is actually true of Org. It is a markup language that looks like plain text but is far more capable.

Org markup should replace Markdown

It does everything Markdown can and much more. And it's older.Emacs isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it was a mistake by Github to latch onto Markdown. Now we are stuck with such a limited markup format with so many incompatible versions--none of which are as adept as Org syntax.I'm guessing it's because Org markup was not embraced early enough by non-Emacs users that Github didn't do it.

( Read More... | 2 comments | on HN )
This talk already happened but for some reason it's not posted. Very odd.
Re:The Future of Thunderbird on Thursday February 09, 2023 @04:59PM (#34732180)
Slowness and memory bloat is the main problem of Thunderbird. I don't know what the cause is, but it is frustrating that there are no full-featured open-source mail apps that have decent performance.

Kmail's UI can be fast, but its IMAP support is so horribly slow and buggy at least for me.

Re:Bilingualism as a Deterrent for Alzheimer’s? on Thursday February 09, 2023 @02:04AM (#34720626)
The original headline is sensationalistic and referencing a specific language learning product so I didn't include it. But this is some interesting research.
Rather overstated. How you perceive the wavefunction has no bearing on how it works.

But it is a valid to be concerned about quantum woo which deliberately misapplies quantum mechanics to macroscopic ones and even the idea of consciousness, all of which is total bullshit.

I have a distant relative who is a religious fundamentalist who thinks that quantum mechanics means that his belief about the veracity of a faith claim is in fact the determinant of its truth. No surprise he likes Jordan Peterson.

Re:Twitter introduces 4k character tweets for subscribers on Thursday February 09, 2023 @01:54AM (#34720561)
This defeats the entire original appeal of Twitter, which was to avoid the ginormous walls of text that Uncle Rico would put on his wall talking about his love for Jesus.
Re:Record $3.8B stolen in crypto hacks last year, report says on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @05:49PM (#34701001)
Wallets do not have to have 2fa. A currency could force them to have it.

Interestingly enough, one of crypto's biggest critics, Elizabeth Warren, has also been after Wells Fargo for Zelle scams.

Re:Record $3.8B stolen in crypto hacks last year, report says on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @02:33PM (#34698075)
Coins could be made to require two different keys to perform operations.

Social engineering attacks getting people to divulge their private single keys are a huge method of crypto theft.

Re:Record $3.8B stolen in crypto hacks last year, report says on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @02:10PM (#34697586)
Coins should have 2FA themselves. Without it, theft is obviously far easier.
Re:Record $3.8B stolen in crypto hacks last year, report says on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @01:53PM (#34697272)
Even the most rinky-dink banks have 2FA. Crypto is eventually going to consume itself once enough marks realize they will never make money from it.
I largely agree with this. But one thing that better AI has revealed is that a lot of human performance is also bullshit. If ChatGPT can pass an MBA final exam, then this would suggest that MBA exams are not good at determining business aptitude.

And I think many people here have seen first-hand that this is true.

Re:Tech's Elite Hates Labor on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @01:26PM (#34696837)
I've seen this as well. VCs are actually terrible at their investments by and large. They mostly use gut instinct or personal networking as their determiner of whether to invest in stuff.

That's a poor heuristic and it is why so many people continue to fail upward.

Re:Tech's Elite Hates Labor on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @01:24PM (#34696800)
It's also that good marketing of a product is probably more integral to its success than its engineering. There are so many stories of superior technologies failing because of bad marketing.
"Nate Fick, the inaugural US ambassador at large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy, on Saturday announced the hack of his personal account (not the government agency one) with - of course - a tweet. "
Unfortunately, this sort of thing is going to become a lot more common.
Re:We come to bury ChatGPT, not to praise it on Monday February 06, 2023 @04:59PM (#34685050)
You can criticize LLMs all you want, they will still be a huge thing in our economy and civilization.
Re:Flutter Desktop Isn't There Yet on Friday February 03, 2023 @06:39PM (#34649451)
This article really needed to be longer and have some illustrations. What's the point of publishing an essay about interface design without including any graphics?

I'm sympathetic to the points made, but as someone who has not used Flutter, I really do not have a sense of what the tooling and output is like based on this short piece.

Re:Elon Musk's right-wing turn is tanking Tesla's reputation on Friday February 03, 2023 @04:21PM (#34647866)
"Currently, just 13.4% of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Tesla, compared with 16% last month and 28.4% in January 2022, according to survey data released on Thursday by Morning Consult Brand Intelligence. That’s a 15% drop year over year. Driving the decline is Tesla’s loss of popularity with people who identify as Democrats. Just 3% of those adults view Musk’s EV company favorably, down from 10.3% in December 2022."
Re:The Breadth of the Fediverse on Friday February 03, 2023 @03:13PM (#34647088)
An interesting look at how the open protocol of ActivityPub has built a much bigger network than it may seem.

I still think Mastodon needs to be made easier for people who aren't techies, but it has a lot of potential since that is only a UX challenge.

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