Derbasti

The SSD is user replaceable, and has been for the last two generations of surface tablets, IIRC.

A good, HBCI capable software that can list transactions and make transfers from and to multiple banks. Think Quicken or MoneyMoney.

The browser will only ever log in to one bank per tab, and with different UI per bank. If you have more than one bank, it becomes a hassle quite quickly.

Photo editing is my last holdout. And a European-compatible banking software.

Everything else works well on Linux. Gaming included. I've run Linux many years, in fact.

But Capture One and Lightroom are not available over there, which is what draws me back to MacOS. Of course I could just use darktable. Have done that for several years. But at the end of the day, I just prefer Capture One, and that's enough reason for me to switch my OS.

If someone pointed a weapon at me, I'd hand them my phone. There's nothing life-threateningly important on my phone. Whatever they do with it is better than death.

You could perhaps drink and drive.

This is one of the best technical computer books I have ever read. Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a whole lot from it.

And besides the great technical content, it is also well-written, funny, and well-illustrated. A monumental achievement!

Maybe in this case, because these are phone pictures, which are quite heavily processed (sharpening, denoising, tone mapping, local white balance, local contrast). The raw image may contain a bit less of that stuff.

You're welcome! I find daily research/work notes completely indispensable at this point.

Author here: the neat thing about Live Share in VSCode/MSVC is that both people can type at the same time, both can use the shared command line and shared debugger, and both can navigate the shared project files. Independently, of course, with each on their own color scheme and keyboard setup.

I don't want to oversell it. It's not perfect, and has loads of bugs. But the fact that we can refractor the code base with two cursors simultaneously, is actually super powerful. Often one person is typing while the other is cleaning up a typo a few characters ago. It feels like symbiosis. It's really good.

And noticeably less lag than screen sharing, too.

Author here: That's an important aspect actually. These days I'm just not excited any more to tinker with my development environment. I've got better things to do...

I've taught programming at the university for a decade. There would always come the time when students would ask what text editor to use. This was an interesting and varied question for many years.

But nowadays, it's just VSCode. It may not be open source, and it may not be a particularly exciting (or good?) text editor. But it has become so ubiquitous that I'd just short-change my students if I recommended anything else.

They'd still occasionally see me type into my Emacs (which looks nothing like stock Emacs). And sometimes it would even get a kid or two interested. Some even switched to Emacs because of those classes. I have since given up teaching, though.

Author here: I love magit. But at the end of the day, I mostly use it for simple stuff like committing, pushing, and the odd merge or blame. And these simple things also work very well with the IDE's git integration.

For everything else, I stick to the command line. That's the only part of git that will always work no matter the interface. I find it easier to memorize, too, and it's of course much easier to search for online.

Author here. Exactly right.

I like the mapy.cz app (and website) a whole lot.

I used to love LawnChair (also, best name), because it was simple and functional. Then it wasn't updated any longer, and at some point broke some Widgets. R.I.P.

After much searching, I've settled on Hyperion instead.

Essentially, I want the Google Launcher without the Google Search Bar. And maybe a slightly denser icon spacing. Hyperion does that trick, even with the free version. But, to stave off another LawnChair situation, I decided to give them a subscription regardless, just so it stays around.

This is not good faith. This is Samsung following the EU law that mandates this for every handset sold in the EU by (IIRC) the end of 2024.

This is the new EU law, so every handset sold in the EU will be required to do this. This is just Samsung following the law.

Man, that book was so good! What a tremendous achievement in clarity and insight. I loved it!

> it seems like Darktable becomes more and more unusable due to a lack of good defaults and easy configurability.

The funny thing is, in my personal experience, Darktable defaults and configurability have actually markedly improved in the last few years. Usability even more so.

Frankly the worst instance of bad defaults and parameters were in the author's own filmic module, which were truly terrible in the beginning. They improved after a few years/versions, but it's still quite the hypocrisy to then complain about this very fact in the rest of the software.

Personally, I think he is wrong.

Several of the features he removed are useful to me. Whatever performance issues he quotes do not seem to apply to my installation.

And there have been rather useful additions to darktable after his fork. For instance the Sigmoid module, an alternative to the author's Filmic module, which I prefer over filmic. Or the very useful Primaries module. To say nothing of various performance improvements, an Mac version that is not broken, and updated camera support.

I've had a few run-ins with the author of this software. He has very strong opinions, and does not accept competing ideas. Good for him to build a fork of darktable that suits his sensibilities. But marketing it as a better alternative to darktable is misleading at best.

I read his efforts as a prime example of burnout. He tried to make the community project darktable into his fiefdom, and failed. So now he's frustrated and angry, and slings insults at the darktable devs.

Binders.

I have never seen a box like this anywhere except in document storage closets in American movies.

They are not a thing in Germany, as far as I can tell.

Clusterfuq

I built my own on top of org-mode: https://github.com/bastibe/org-static-blog

And also various others, for various reasons. The thing about static site generators is that they are fantastically easy.

And moreso for a cross-platform tool. Essentially it's forcing devs to spend money on the Windows platform only, where they might prefer to spend it in a way that benefits all their users.

I could not disagree more vehemently. The old UI was ugly and clunky and anachronistic. I find the new UI much more readable, with a sensibly usable three-column layout, and much improved message list.

To each their own, I guess.

The point of the dissertation is to become certified as a PhD. Most supervisors are not open to the idea of stepping outside the norm. Which is downright tragic, as research should be all about that.

My writing was actively criticized wherever I tried to use simple vocabulary. It was heartbreaking, and made me resent academia to this day.

I had a Fairphone 2 in Germany (where the next Apple Store was four hours away). I dropped it onto the metal blades of our radiator, which shattered the screen. I was due to go on vacation in two days.

So I express-ordered the replacement screen from Fairphone, which arrived the next day, case closed. (A similar thing happened with a Pixel 4a a few years later, which had to be mailed in, and took a week.)

My wife also had a Fairphone 2, and her headphone jack was a bit flakey. So after a few months we ordered a replacement module, which fixed the problem (for €30!). Afterwards, I emailed Fairphone as this issue had existed from the start. They refunded us the module.

And I also fondly remember the updated camera module they sold for the Fairphone 2.

Alas, these phones are too big for my tastes, which is why I no longer have one.

I mean, this was mandated by the EU recently, right? So we should expect ALL manufacturers switch to this soon.

Thank you. This is very true, and equally sad.