stringsandchars

> That's a horseload of bullcrap.

I agree it'd be hard for almost any other country to match that general sense of "safety" in Japanese society - we've probably all read the stories about wallets full of cash being dutifully handed in to the lost property office, and so on.

But the idea that Spanish towns are seething with pickpockets and everyone is creeping around in fear is also "bullcrap", imo.

My family is from Spain and I've spent a lot of time living and visiting there. Before she passed away, my 90+ year-old mum was out with her friends every single evening - playing cards, walking around the streets, mixing it up with families and small children strolling and playing outside long into the night.

I'm pretty amazed some robbers somehow knew your alarm was off that one time you had to rush out. That was pretty bad luck.

> It's a concept that's difficult to replicate elsewhere, but Lydon compares it to what made old Main Street America so special. Designing at a people-first scale pays off. "The smell of fried croquettes drifting onto the streets, small shops run by the building owners, easy public transit access, a feeling of safety and community for all ages… it's hard to overstate how well this all works."

Honestly, even though I love the idea of Japan and the idealized vision of Japan that's often presented in the media, I can't help thinking that a lot of this stuff can be found much closer to home in Europe. The BBC didn't need to go all the way to Tokyo - they could find this in pretty much any Spanish city.

I think the only wise thing Elon Musk ever said was "Generally newspapers seem to try to answer the question, 'What is the worst thing that happened on the Earth today?'"

> Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.

Because Amazon were increasingly locking-down their systems - and also because they are all-round shits - I decided to abandon the ecosystem having been a customer since the days they only sold books.

I have owned two Paperwhites, two Oasis devices, and a Kindle Scribe. I sold all of them last year and bought a Kobo Libra Colour.

I get WAY more joy from reading on the Kobo. I love buying books from the Kobo store (yes I know they also have DRM) - and I'm buying and reading WAY more on the Kobo than I was at the end of my time with Amazon.

Every time I buy yet another book on the Kobo Store I feel the thrill of sticking it to the horrible, anti-user shits at Amazon.

> pirating everything on annas archive et. al. cannot be beat by any commercial offering

While I understand people pirating movies - there are hundreds of movies I'd happily pay to watch, but which are literally unavailable to me because of some arbitrary 'regional' restriction imposed by the distributors. But I can't think of a single book that isn't available in most parts of the world - certainly they're available wherever a Kobo is for sale.

So how are new books going to be published in the future, if people like you don't pay writers for their work? Would you like your work to be pirated, so you wouldn't be able to even buy another Kobo?

Disappointed to see that the first reactions on HN are so dismissive.

I'm both amazed and really pleased to see anyone attempting to launch a totally new scanner in 2025, and genuinely hoping the actual scans are really made at the resolution and color-depth claimed in the text: too many recent scanners are simply upscaled, lower bit-depth devices marketed with exaggerated specs.

I also have a Nikon Coolscan 9000, so I'm not immediately in the market for this. But I don't expect the Coolscan to last forever, and the Firewire connections on the machine are already abandoned by Apple, who chose not to support the cables in their latest Operating System - so eventually I won't be able to connect it to a new computer.

OTOH - partly playing devil's advocate here - I'm dealing with several bank and inheritance-related issues in the UK from my home in Sweden now, and needing to do pretty much ANYTHING with an authority in the UK feels like stepping back into the 17th century.

There's a constant requirement for paperwork to prove who I am - always in the form of items that are 100% digital nowadays in the Nordic countries (like a "utility bill" or a "credit card statement" - on paper, posted by snail-mail to my home address!)

These then need to be 'notarized' by a legal person - with seals and embossed stamps before they can be used to identify me. It's medieval.

I'm genuinely hoping that this is just an early beta omission because, contrary to the very limited use-case presented in the article (iPods) Firewire is still an essential part of many professional workflows: an enormous amount of very expensive high-end music-studio equipment uses Firewire, as well as film scanners such as the CoolScan range from Nikon, that still outperform camera scanning - even using modern 'medium format' cameras like the Fuji GFX100.

Replacing that equipment would be extremely expensive - disincentivizing buying new Mac equipment.

My work really flourished during WFH. I was actually headhunted back to a place I'd worked before with the (verbal) promise they were now and always would be 'remote first'. During the last 2 years my productivity has exploded. I get up, make myself a coffee, and start working at 6am. Then after a shower and a walk in the forest, I work a full day of intense and focussed work. I've been happy, fit, fulfilled. I've often visited the office and love the social interaction. I've often worked weekends and evening because it's been fun, and I've felt loyalty to the company. Then 8 weeks ago the CEO suddenly announced RTO.

But this has been such a wake-up call. I stopped doing the extra work, no longer respond to questions that are out-of-hours, and have finally realized that the company really isn't my 'friend' or 'family'. But best of all, when I'm at the office I can just coast and do practically no work whatsoever - and not only does no-one notice, I've even been getting more managerial praise for my performance.

We're living in a mad world.

> You're right that it does seem extremely callous and is honestly a disturbing mindset to have. Hopefully you never experience terror like the victims of the last few months in France experienced in your life.

Thanks for the tone-policing. But instead of implicitly suggesting that my mindset or tone is inappropriate, it would be great if we discussed the substance of the points.

> Crypto isn’t synonymous with anarchy, just like the internet isn’t synonymous with pornography. Both are cliches from long ago.

Saying crypto isn’t synonymous with anarchy, like the internet isn’t with pornography, sidesteps the point. Pornography is just one use of the internet — not its central purpose.

But crypto wasn’t just built to host financial activity — it was designed to restructure it, removing reliance on central authorities. That core intent isn’t a cliché; it’s a defining feature.

Comparing it to incidental internet content is a rhetorical deflection, not a real counterpoint.

This may seem callous, but isn't a large point of crypto that you are 'free' from the shackles imposed by the State?

And I guess that includes protection from criminals by the oppressive forces of the State (aka the police). In which case being kidnapped and having your fingers sent to your family is an integral part of your 'freedom'.

Aside from my doubts about the way this is measured, is it even a good strategy to simply chase the currently "most popular" languages?

A few years ago I shared an office with three aged graybeards who sat in a corner and spent 3 half-days per week silently working on legacy COBOL systems. I thought they were something of a joke, and said so when a person with insight into their invoicing was present. They corrected my impression.

> Photoshop All Creative Cloud £59.99 pcm (£720 pa) > this last one ^ bundles all the proprietary adobe “rented” software they mentioned into one package.

And the worst thing about that 'package' is that if you need (say) just Photoshop + Illustrator - well suddenly the 'cheapest' way to do that is paying for the entire package of garbage that you don't want and will never need.

> I actually call BS on the "not-being-able-to-tell".

I actually call BS on your BS.

I don't believe that people are standing with two phones in their hand - an Android and an iPhone - and comparing them the way that people here are suggesting. I don't think I have ever seen anyone do that IRL, and I don't believe anyone actually does it.

People go to the Apple Store to get their iPhone or to some other store to get their Android phone, because they are interested in either platform, and absolutely not thinking about hopping from one to the other based on some imperceptible screen-refresh 'smoothness'.

> I wouldn't be surprised that the average upgrade cycle for a lot of folks is in that 3-5 year range, for both personal and corporate buyers.

My personal laptop is a 2014 MacBook Pro. I'll be buying one of these new M4 Airs, and comparing to an 11-year-old computer.

> But the quality of what was built was worse than what the commies built in the Eastern Europe.

The rural council housing built in post-war UK was of really high quality: these houses were built for durability and community. They were solid brick or stone construction, and had large gardens to promote self-sufficiency. I grew up in one of these houses, and my parents grew enough vegetables in the enormous garden that we only needed meat and dairy from the store.

The article is an awful jumble of free-market junk, and as others have mentioned, doesn't mention Brexit or privatization as two of the main causes of economic stagnation.

Unfortunately Onyx Boox have used sockpuppets and other dirty tricks on Reddit[0] and elsewhere to harass and deter users reporting broken screens. Their international partners have webpages explaining how it's "impossible" that e-ink screens can be damaged or broken without you dropping or sitting on them[1] And in general the company is hostile to anyone with damaged devices or issues of other sorts.

Although no-one is perfect, I really like Supernote and their way of developing as much as possible in the open[2]. The devices are really great to use[3]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/19czc16/a_genera...

[1] https://einktab.ca/dealing-with-a-broken-e-ink-screen-what-y...

[2] https://trello.com/b/l0COP24j/supernote-a5-x-a6-x-nomad-soft...

[3] https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/01/18/2335

I like the fact that there are no new features. The service is mature and doesn't need any changes. Also I use a bookmarklet on mobile (in a more easily-customized iOS browser called iCab), so I have no problems with responsive styling. Sometimes a minimum amount of effort is needed to make a service work the way you want it.

For a while a few years ago the service was unstable, but I haven't noticed any problems recently.

Have no recall of the service-owner's politics - but I do remember he is somewhat 'mercurial' in his emotions - and I've often wondered whether he will just decide to shutdown without warning.

Otherwise the service is minimal, no-nonsense, and no hassle. I don't get this post at all.

> Other than a lazy dig at "bland Nordic cuisine"[1]... > [1] ie a culinary tradition of letting the taste of the ingredients stand for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices (originally a measure to make up for the fact that things spoil easily in warm climates)

I'm afraid if you think that Swedish food is about "the taste of the ingredients stand[ing] for themselves, rather than covering them up with spices" then you really don't have a good familiarity with this cuisine.

Historically the need to preserve food through the long winter, or even make scarce food appetizing during the summer, means that Nordic food has always been much more processed (salting, pickling, smoking, smothering with dill or mustard, and so on) than the much more fresh and unadulterated recipes of the Mediterranean, where fresh fish, fruit and vegetables have always been more plentiful, and a greater part of traditional recipes (together with the sausage and other 'winter' food I mentioned).

I'm also sad to hear that you think my comment amounted to a "lazy dig".

> right now, it might be a swing in the direction of sameism, but i assure you that eventually new dishes will arise.

I do hope you're right, and I agree that there are some fusions that are quite exciting and add diversity to some cuisines that are otherwise quite bland and monotonous (Swedish food has definitely got a massive lift from introduced diversity, for instance).

But what I've mostly seen so far, is convergence towards the vaguely 'international' and inoffensive.

In this process, items like blood pudding (a sausage made mostly from blood and fat) or pork wrapped in cabbage with almonds and raisins get phased-out, in favor of homogenous crowd-pleasers that taste the same across Europe.

The article mentions cafés and restaurants looking the same, but a more significant change in my opinion is that regional recipes are disappearing and all food is beginning to taste the same.

I've seen this gradually happening in the towns in Spain where I've visited my family since a child: for instance in Bilbao the traditional pintxos/tapas are gradually becoming erased and substituted with a more 'international' style of elaborate mayonnaise combos that are photogenic for spread on social media. And in a weekly newsletter I get about Spanish culture this was the latest topic: specifically how traditional Mallorcan restaurants are disappearing and being replaced by more generic 'Spanish' tourist-pleasers.

As I've seen this happen in pretty much every city I've visited over the last decade (including Stockholm where I live now), I imagine it's a generalized phenomenon that will be hard or impossible to reverse.

> I like the commute, it marks the beginning and end of my workday and I get fresh air.

I get up at 06:15. Work for an hour, then go for a fast and invigorating walk through the forest where I often encounter deer, and this week a fox, and then I'm back at my home-desk to start the day with some video meetings.

When my kids get back from school I take a break and we have a snack together. Then I work another hour, and then in the summer I roll out my bike, and in the winter we've gone out with the snow-racer (although the kids don't wanna do that so much anymore).

Before covid I used to sit in a miserable office. Everyone had headphones on. My window overlooked a motorway on-ramp that was always backed-up as far as the eye could see.

> Organize a week to have all local and international employees together for a week once or twice a year, schedule big organizational meetings and important discussions in that week, sponsor dinner and lunch together, have a team event or three? ... That's actually nice and valuable.

When I read posts like this - however well-intentioned - I just see a person without kids or other responsibilities, who thinks it would be 'fun' to fly out to some town and hang with their colleagues 24/7 for those seven days, and forgetting that for a lot of people this would be difficult or impossible. At home there can be children that need to be looked after, or an elderly parent who needs a visit, or a partner who works nights or a disability that would make this type of 'cool' get-together impossible or extremely stressful.

> Bicycles are equal to other vehicles so it makes sense to concentrate the intersecting traffic to one flow, so it is easier to observe

Swedish bike lanes are the absolute worst I've cycled on - and I've cycled in England, Denmark, Spain and (briefly) the Netherlands.

Disregarding the pitiful maintenance of a lot of the bike lanes in Stockholm (which is another discussion), the current model where a bike-lane has been carved from the pedestrian pavement, but which then throws the cyclist out to the road immediately before a junction is a deadly design which I've found to be nerve-wracking both when I'm cycling or driving. The cyclist is hidden behind parked cars, and is in the blindspot of turning trucks, until the very last seconds before suddenly emerging into the flow of traffic when crossing the side-street. I see near-misses almost every day.

It amazes me that anyone ever thought this was a good idea - but even more egregious to me is that Swedes seem to think their own invention is somehow so good they want to export it.

> what library you are using?

Not the OP but these look like they are Apple's own SwiftUI Charts framework:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/charts