Hacker News Reader

I’ve recently gotten over this sentiment with my electronics. When I was a kid, each device was an irreplaceable gift from a parent or represented the investment of a long time saving. So each device was treated with the absolute care. As a result I spent a lot of time babying hardware. Now I’m a few generations of hardware into being an adult and am retiring perfect condition objects that are just too slow. For what? I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m allowed to use devices exactly how I feel like it. They exist as tools for me to use! Looking back at my chunky MacBook cover in college is funny, now. What’s the point of a fancy surface finish on the hardware if you never get to see it?

I changed to this with electronics when I decided that the midrange and below was more than enough for anything I'm doing and that every movable device should be treated as if it could be dropped on a tile floor or grow legs and walk away at any time.

Automated backups, cloud storage and services, encrypted local storage, remote wipe if feasible, devices that are midrange but still getting security and feature updates. Not quite seamless to move to a new device, but it's not that hard either.

Exactly the same here! My MBP in college had a safety case and everything... and in hindsight its awful and bulky and hides the fancy finish.

One important thing to remember, at least for me, is I just had significantly less disposable income back then. Replacing the MBP would have been financially impossible for me, so I took more care of it. I'm in a much more privileged place now... so replacing something like this would only be a significant inconvenience.

It's not necessarily unreasonable to take some additional steps to protect your essential tools that would be very financially inconvenient to replace. What's "reasonable" of course depends on the details. But that doesn't necessarily mean suffering along with inferior products (computers, cameras) because you're afraid they'll get stolen or damaged (which insurance can mittigate against to some degree).

Honestly those cases would not have helped your mac any. It has a substantial amount of shock protection already from the case, if you open it up you can see how the corners especially have plenty of room to deform before hitting something important, and if you are smacking that computer hard enough to deform the corners the thin plastic case might as well be a piece of paper. Maybe they help prevent scratches which could hurt resale value potentially.

My 2012 macbook pro looks like its been throw out of a moving vehicle at this point. Dinged corners, scratched up bottoms and missing screws and feet. Thats why they make them out of a metal unibody chassis after all, to keep up with being dropped all the time and scratched up.

Doesn't stop the battery from expanding and ruining the keyboard, trackpad, bottom and top case.

RIP 2015 MBP - you still had a few years left in ya.

With the 2012 at least, the first tell for the battery expanding is actually the trackpad. The trackpad will start to no longer click as well because it is still a physical button in this model. It might not even click at all before it finally swells to the point it shatters the trackpad. Luckily the placement of the battery spares the keyboard too; its all in the palm and trackpad area.

I'm on battery number 2 at this point, and the swap takes as long as a dozen phillips heads takes to unscrew then screw. I don't envy the more recent glued battery models and don't look forward to the day when this pretty repairable rig finally bites the dust and I'm forced into one.

Didn’t you get the battery replaced under Apple program some years ago, I think it was 2019? I got a brand new battery for free.

They replaced it with another defective battery that only lasted ~28 cycles before it expanded. Apple refuses to do anything about it.

Edit: Screenshot I submitted to Apple.

https://ibb.co/jwRN1MH

I had the exact same experience, and ended up replacing the battery myself. Not a difficult job, but extremely tedious.

I would replace the battery if that was the only part affected. Unfortunately when it expanded just like the last time it bends/warps the top case and keyboard, the metal around the trackpad and the bottom case. I can't just replace the battery and leave everything else bent/warped, the laptop won't sit level, the screen will not close completely. It's really not a cheap or easy task. Not to mention the risk involved in removing a battery that is expanded and could rupture.

What app are you using to show cpu/mem/temp?

istat menus.

https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

This is why my phone looks like I’ve been to war with it. I didn’t pay the price to grip five dollar plastic cases and after my phone has been unbearably slow, no one wants to use it anyway.

> Eventually I came across the idea that things are meant to be used, and now I'm much more relaxed about damaging/using up the things I own.

Its like the people with cabinets full of fine china that nobody eats off of for 50 years. My mother was one of those people. Growing up we had a large cabinet of fine place sets that we were always "saving" for some other time. I finally convinced her to start using it one holiday season, and we were actually using and enjoying it for the last few years of her life.

I'm strongly in the camp that there's no point in having nice things if you never actually use those things.

"Not putting miles on your Ferrari is like not having sex with your girlfriend so she'll be more desirable to her next boyfriend." -Jim Glickenhaus

The flaw in this delightful analogy is that boyfriends don't typically sell their girlfriends to each other.

And that women don't get "used up" because they have sex! Truly delightfully disgusting, that analogy. You'd probably need to own a Ferrari to come up with such nonsense.

A shocking number of people believe otherwise. I heard even more disgusting analogies about this, but one is enough for today.

That isn't a flaw at all. There was no mention of selling; it could be referring to a car being passed down from generation to generation.

Speak for yourself

That quote is pretty messed up.

Indeed. Who lets their girlfriend have another boyfriend?

she's my girlfriend, not my property, she can do what she wants

i'm not in a position to 'let her' or not 'let her'

also they've been together longer than we have

When helping clear out a deceased relation's house, we found pretty much every piece of cut glass (wine glasses, whisky glasses, decanters, bowls etc) was chipped. That was a good sign that it had all been used and enjoyed.

Where the fine china situation gets awkward is when parents want to give it to their kids, but it means absolutely nothing to the kids because they never used it.

I took my parents' wedding china and I can probably count the times I've used it on a couple of hands. Though there's more of it than my own stoneware so when I do have a big crowd over, it's been handy a couple of times.

I was watching a video on how to split logs using high quality steel wedges and a point they made really struck me:

"Most people think the high quality wedges should be made out of hard, durable steel. That's actually the opposite of what you want. Hard steel wedges 'throw' chips when hit by a hammer.

You want soft steel that deforms since that's safer. If you are wondering 'But doesn't that mean the wedge wears down over time?', yes it does. That's fine b/c wedges are considered consumables."

The idea of an item being high quality AND consumable for safety/design reasons gave me a new appreciation for things like high quality pencils, paper etc:

yes they are high quality and get used up but that's the point

> I also just tried out the new "sidekick notepad" from Cortex. Very expensive (overpriced), but I was happy to support their work.

The sidekick notepad is a pretty nice idea, but $32 + $12 shipping is a lot for a 60 page pad.

I've been using a Notsu dot-grid landscape notepad (great paper!) but it's 8.5" x 5.5". I just wish it was larger. The Sidekick looks like a pretty nice size...

How hard is it to get custom pads made? I'm guessing non-standard dimensions are a bit of a blocker when you only want to order a dozen or two.

I've had reasonable luck at local print shops. They can do custom sizes in a plastic spiral binding for a reasonable price. I haven't found someone who can do a sewn binding, but I wonder about asking a leatherworker in town if his machine could do 30 pages if I bought a few spare needles.

The Notsu pad that I like has the pages held in by some glue along the edge. I like it better than a spiral and I think I like it better than the tear-away style that the Sidekick is using. The glue seems relatively easy to do, so all I really need is somebody to print me 12" x 7" dot-grid pages.

The minimalismart.com softcovers that GP linked to have a B5 (10x7.6) size as well, including dot grid option.

True, but it isn't landscape and it doesn't look like the pages are designed to tear out cleanly and easily.

If you haven't looked at them before, the Rhodia dotPad or Top Wirebound Notepad might be a fit for you and usable in either orientation. Rhodia's "pad" products seem to all have perforated pages (they tear nicely) where the "book" products are non-perforated.

Edit: the wirebound has an A4 size page option, the dotPad has an A4 and a longer-than-A4 option. ~$10-16 depending on color and where you order, Amazon is not the cheapest option out there.

The longer-than-A4 option is intriguing. I’m wondering if a print shop would be able to cut off the top binding and change it to a glue edge along one of the long sides?

Can confirm, they are not tear-friendly.

Nothing quite as sad as perfect, mint-condition camera lenses that never left the box to take any pictures.

“A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

A similar approach I've heard (but never brave enough to do) is when you get a new car, intentionally scratch the paint yourself.

Then you won't be as concerned about the inevitable dings and scratches it will accumulate.

I live in the rust belt, where cars only look new for the first 3 years or so. After that, they are 100% guaranteed to have chips in the paint from 18-wheelers throwing rocks, rust on the frame/fenders from the salt, and dings from other people parking 6 inches from your door.

And if you own a prius in the midwest, it's not a matter of IF someone will key it in the parking lot of home depot, it's a matter of WHEN.

> And if you own a prius in the midwest, it's not a matter of IF someone will key it in the parking lot of home depot, it's a matter of WHEN.

I live in Texas, where I'd expect such behavior before I saw it in the midwest; parking lots are awash in Priuses, and no-one seems to bat an eye at it. Maybe it's that I live in a city. Where in the midwest would you expect this?

Probably some rural areas. There was one sparsely populated area in Northern Wisconsin I was told avoid ordering food at non-chain restaurants. They would happily try to kill you or make you sick if you had a food allergy.

Having grown up in Wisconsin, I absolutely believed that. I went to high school with people like that. And they got it from their parents.

My dad heckled me for getting a Prius and buying Apple products.

It makes me really sad because they aren’t representative of the majority of rural people I know.

Anywhere >1 hour away from a city

Damn, people need to get a life.

Reminds me of an old freestyle motorcycling video I saw.

This guy had a new dirt bike and said ”Yeah you’re always a little hesitant with a shiny new bike, afraid you’ll scratch it up. That’s dangerous when doing these big tricks so I like to throw the bike and scratch it up intentionally to get over that fear. Then the tricks go flying”

So he throws the bike and breaks the clutch lever. But they were in the sand dunes in the middle of nowhere to shoot this stunting video and the ride back to civilization wouldn’t come until evening. He did not get to ride that day.

Best thing that happened for my wife and my marriage was the flooring people doing a shitty job before we moved into my house. She shrugs off every scuff I put in the floor with "it's crappy anyways"

Some guitar players do this. Scratch a new guitar so they can get over feeling like they need to treat it with great care.

I got a new car last August, noticed like two months in that someone lightly scratched/bumped the rear left bumper. Oddly enough it's almost a good thing because now I'm not as scared anymore

An acquaintance claimed to know someone who would use a bat to make the first dent in any new car he purchased. But that could be one of those stories that just travel around.

I intend to resell my car, so not going to do that, but I like the idea. Very stoic-adjaecent

You're lucky you don't live in a larger city. It's impossible to keep it 100% scratch/dent free unless you 100% of the time park in your own garage. Even if you park your car in underground, private for-profit garages, it'll eventually end up with a scratch/dent somewhere, somehow.

Yeah, I live in the middle of nowhere and it's far better this way. I just get cat and raccoon footprints on my roof.

This is why I buy used guitars.

Spent a lot of my childhood getting stickers from the book ordering program, putting the sheets of them in a box, and never doing anything with them again.

Most of them were ruined during my adulthood when my basement flooded.

Now when I get a sticker, I throw it on something even if it's not the perfect destination for that sticker.

I feel attacked.

I have a drawer containing stickers that arrived with beloved products that I can't bear to commit to putting on anything. Some are decades old.

I have a pair of Technics stickers that I got with my Technics SL-1200 mkIIs in 2002. I think there may still be a rainbow Apple sticker in there. I have stickers for bands whose members have long ago stopped making music and now have boring day jobs and families.

It's good to remember that a nice notebook costs less than a meal at the restaurant.

True. Also an A5 size artist's sketchbook - with hard covers, 120g/m^2 off white paper (will take any pen from Sharpie downwards as well as watercolours) and sewn bindings - can be bought almost anywhere in the UK and costs less than two coffees in a nice cafe (£5).

Just keep one with you.

PS: I did think that the linked article was going to be about low specification laptops, and was preparing to extol the virtues of recycled Thinkpads.

I mean cheap notebooks and a recycled thinkpad are basically the perfect portable tools for thinking.

I think some products are better designed to wear gracefully than others. The old iPods with the reflective back are a good example. Those things looked nice for about 5 minutes unless you immediately put them in a case.

Conversely, newer Apple products seem to wear out very gracefully. A 4 or 5 year old iPhone may look used, but it doesn't look horrifyingly ugly unless the owner seriously abused it.

Like a lot of people, I admittedly use a case but that's as much because I prefer the greater gripiness for one-handed use as much as for protection.

I use this brand as well. I really like the paper. And I’ll throw in an endorsement for the Pilot G2 pen, too. I like the 0.7 the best.

For me personally, I like having the caps on pens. Clicky ones tend to stay clicked and dry out the point. I really like the 0.38 uni-ball signo dx :)

I never thought I was the type of person to have strong feelings on a pen... then I decided to see what I was missing out on and there's just so much out there!

I learned this lesson the hard way. I bought a new car after college graduation. Ordered it from the factory, got exactly what I wanted, picked it up with 5 miles on the odometer. I waged that car 4 times in three days.

On the 4th day, my mother backed out of the garage and damaged three panels on the front and side of the car.

After that I realized it was just a car.

> I waged that car 4 times in three days.

"waged"? Do you mean "waxed"?

Yes waxed. Damn autocorrect

This reminds me of getting new sneakers as a kid and trying to keep it clean, only to have a friend deliberately step on it. Was it annoying? Sure. But I gotta admit -- I didn't have to worry about keeping them pristine afterwards.

> I read once a stellar idea to help get over the fear of starting to draw in a notebook (or an art project, or a new software project) is to just start scribbling and drawing. Intentionally starting with a mess makes it much easier to break the cycle of "This thing I'm doing isn't good enough yet for this".

Along these lines, something I have shamelessly stolen from Merlin Mann is to write "The first page is profound" on the first page of every notebook I get.

> One notebook brand my wife found, that I love very much, is minimalism art

Do you know how their paper is with pencil? I've found that a lot of the nicer notebook brands work really well with pen, but the paper doesn't have enough tooth for pencil to write very well.

I have to buy shitty notepads otherwise with the nice Dingbats ones, I cannot start writing naturally because I get paralysed. With a basic notepad, I just go with the flow and don't overthink.

I really like buy myself flowers about this. They're nice, but inherently temporary, I can't save them for a special occasion.

That page brings me back ten years and not in a good way, I can hardly read the text.

Yea, the site design isn't the best with the transparent-ish nav and low contrast. Certainly room for improvement there :)

I could never ever be able to own a new car, I always buy 5+ years for this reason.

I'm really bad at spotting decent used cars. It has always bitten me. I overpay once for a new car and then drive it into the ground. Never had a new car last me less than 10yrs.

It's all about the brand and previous owners. Personally, I only buy used from Honda and Toyota. They have a reputation to uphold for reliability. Buy a carfax. $20 well spent to know the history of ownership. It's not foolproof, but generally good enough. Check with your friend group and extended relationships to see if they are selling cars. If they know you, even through a friend, hopefully they have enough shame to not try and screw you on a lemon.

Really glad to hear I am not the only person with this trait/disorder lol.

> use the good china every day

is the best advice one can get in life.

I admit I rarely use my fine china I inherited but that's because I actually prefer to use my stoneware day to day.