EleanorKonik

I have learned so much about SQL databases and playwright tests and python and all sorts of things that were completely opaque to me (but are quite useful for my day job) before I started using AI tools.

And a lot of these skills I've picked up would be usable even if I didn't have AI for handholding anymore. It definitely feels like I have the dedicated attention of a junior developer helping me learn moreso than someone taking over my work and leaving me out in the metaphorical cold in terms of intellectual growth.

Yeah, I read it all the way through and enjoyed most of it. The rice part got a little preachy and the speculation about dog domestication was kind of annoying, but I learned a ton. It was originally recommended by a friend.

At risk of being accused of self promotion, if you're curious for my in-depth take, I reviewed back in 2021 on my newsletter: https://eleanorkonik.com/book-review-tamed

Back when I was reading Tamed by Alice Roberts, about the history of domestication, I remember being startled that modern ground nuts and rice were the product of irradiation.

I've sent faxes in America within the last 2 years; they're still a thing here too.

Unironically one of my favorite uses of chatgpt is to tell it to rewrite things as a Homeric epic in the style of Tennyson so it's more pleasant to read aloud and I have a better chance of remembering it

Honestly, in these days of the google play store taking its cut from Amazon, using Libby is actually easier than using the kindle app to buy books. Every time I hit that "you can't buy books from inapp" button I remember that I can use Libby instead and go there instead of the browser to buy my book, tbh.

I went to a public honors college / small state school, and arranged my schedule such that I only had 3 days of classes, so I could go home and take care of my sick mom and work a part time weekend job. Even then the schedule was not what I would consider punishing; significantly LESS academic work than I'd needed to do in high school taking APs, even with the reading load.

That school definitely is not in danger of losing its accreditation any time soon. It also didn't have any frats/sororities, and there weren't any bars within a 15 minute drive.

No; I've been to places that just outright refuse to accept physical cash at all, and I live in America.

I'm still immensely grateful to all the HN folks who helped me recover from my hug of death a year or so ago by teaching me the Cloudflare tricks. I'm with Ghost Pro now instead of Wordpress, but man, IDK what I would have done without the Cloudflare advice in the meantime!

We definitely need to make this more obvious, but you can import an OPML. I usually just drag it from my downloads folder into the app, but it also works if you use the 'upload file' command.

The language is a little different than folders/tags (and believe me, I stan folders the one and only time I ever hit the front page of HN it was for an article written in defense of using folders for notetaking) but you can get basically the same effect with filtered views. Here's a deep dive our community manager Erin made if you're interested: readwise.io/reader202

I hope that helps!

PS: Dan said more export features are coming.

Sounds a bit like the Shmoo, of Shmoocon fame.

> Are you familiar with The Shmoo, Mr. Fisher? Comic strip I liked as a boy. The Shmoo was a loveable creature, really. Laid eggs, gave milk... ...and died of sheer ecstasy when looked at with hunger. The Shmoo loved to be eaten. It could taste like any food you desire. Shmoo hide cut thin made fine leather. Even Shmoo whiskers made excellent toothpicks.

> In essence, The Shmoo supplied all of the world's wants. I only bring up the case of The Shmoo because of its relevance to you and the reason you were brought here.

(via Lucky Number Slevin, which is a vastly underrated movie IMO)

Is this still common? I think AP recently moved away from subtracting points for incorrect answers.

To save other Windows users a click, it's mac-only right now.

> When it comes to privacy and security, it’s deathly important to be as unambiguous as possible.

Did ... did they miss the giant, in-your-face warning that happens when you intentionally deactivate safe mode in order to be able to install plugins?

This one is still in the manual-install phase, but you might like this plugin: https://github.com/tomaszkiewicz/obsidian-database-plugin

Honestly this is one of the handful of plugins I hate trying to live without.

Tag wrangler is the other.

I can speak for Maggie, but the relevant Obsidian plugins are probably Dataview, Templater, and the Spaced Repetition plugin(s).

You might find this community resource for navigating plugins by category helpful: https://publish.obsidian.md/hub/02+-+Community+Expansions/02...

This is the piece I've been struggling to get at. I understand why filesystems exist and how they help with interacting with the physical structures that underlie computers, but I don't understand what benefit a database alternative to directories can offer (and if you tell me a directory is just a specialized database please be prepared to explain using very clear language).

Maybe there is one, but even when I talk to experienced devs with engineering (not just software) backgrounds, I haven't gotten a good explanation. Perhaps because there isn't one?

But I've been curious about this for weeks.

App sandboxing on iOS is supposed to be a security feature, I think? But it makes it impossible for apps like Obsidian to work with apps like Dropbox, which benefits Apple; they force people to use iCloud.

I got through all of school, including two professional degrees, organizing all of my notes chronologically. It worked really well for me — right up until I tried to write a novel, hah.

I think the "best process" is driven by goals — my husband gets by just using notepad and plaintext files, because he and I have very different goals with our notes. He's a software developer, and I'm a nerdy scifi author.

As long as his code is documented clearly, he mostly doesn't need a system more complicated than some .txt files and browser history search. Me? I've got way too much going on, and I need to be able to follow reference chains so I can figure out what the heck I was thinking six months ago when I wrote the thing I'm trying to publish.

It's easier in the sense that if you're a brand new baby programmer, it takes fewer easily-findable-via-Google commands. Sorry if that wasn't clear!

The article wasn't really written for the HackerNews audience, sorry I never expected to wind up here — it was written for, like, college kids majoring in archaeology.

I've got over 2k files in my Obsidian vault and haven't had a problem really.

I think it depends on how you categorize things? I'm never going to confuse my tax documents with my short fiction, or my character profiles for a fantasy character for my daily notes page.

I think I managed to get Cloudflare set up, let's hope that works

Ah, bless, this is exactly what I am doing right now and it is much less terrifying than I thought it would be.

Ironically, this has been on my todo list to learn — I want to mirror my Obsidian notes and that requires Cloudflare and before today I've been too nervous to muck around with it.

If I can figure out how to GET to my wordpress page for long enough, I'll set up a redirect and mirror it as an article on https://obsidianroundup.org/ — which is literally what I was working on this week, haha, the nice folks at Ghost's concierge already helped me do it for my history nerd stuff newsletter.

Someone reached out and said I can use Cloudflare to fix this, so I'm gonna go try that, doot doot.

I am _literally_ mid-migration to Ghost because of how slow Wordpress is :( :( :(

I'm hosted on Digital Ocean, and the irony is, I'm literally mid-migration to Ghost from Wordpress — if this had happened a week later this wouldn't have happened.

I'm trying to figure out how to upgrade the droplet but being honest, my husband is the one who set all this up for me, so it's going to take me a minute to figure out how to add more bandwidth or whatever.

Oh god I'm sorry I wasn't expecting this level of traffic, let me see if I can fix it.

I'm not sure how that explains Australia, heh

Obsidian actually supports Jupyter via a plugin, if I recall.