bhauer

GFA was fantastic. I used it for various telecommunications programs back in the day. The only thing I really wanted as an addition was data structures.

> My guess is that handing this out is a very nice thing to do but perhaps irrelevant in a world where 400v and 800v drive systems are the state of the art.

The high-voltage system for the drive motors, whether 400V or 800V, is unrelated to the low-voltage system for accessories. The transition from 12V to 48V is concerning the low-voltage system. Prior to the Cybertruck, no automobile ever had a fully 48V low-voltage system. To learn more about how this is a big deal, check out Jason Cammisa's video on the subject. I've cued it to the specific topic in the [1] link below.

[1] https://youtu.be/L6WDq0V5oBg?si=dbzsPMAkvmGiQQ8n&t=613

> YMMV - The reverse for me. I hate it when I don't see the extension.

Sounds like it's not the reverse for you. You and GP commenter both think hiding file extensions was a silly feature. And I agree.

> Tesla. Rivian. All cut from the same cloth.

I'm not aware of any Tesla OTA updates bricking the infotainment system. At least since I've been paying attention. I don't see them quite as similar as you suggest.

> Can I just say how absurd it is to call the government allowing developers to build new houses "tyranny"?

Yes, please do say this.

If anything in the system is tyranny-adjacent, it's zoning. Not to say I am against zoning holistically, but zoning is others telling you what you can and cannot do with your property. To characterize a liberalization of zoning as tyrannical is a great inversion.

Indeed. It's especially irritating that such bribes are necessary to get approval to build anything in the first place.

In Firefox, I also add the following to userChrome.css to make the scroll thumb high-contrast versus the scroll bar itself. The default Firefox colors are, in my opinion, too low-contrast.

    :root {
      scrollbar-color: rgb(35,75,240) rgb(220,222,224) !important;
    }

The first color is for the thumb (the part you pick up and drag) and the second color is for the remainder of the scrollbar.

Resulting appearance: https://imgur.com/a/A1LTS4M

Welcome to Windows 98 and Active Desktop.

So a patent that predates their work could, at most, frustrate them for 20 years, or two decades. I have no idea who these guys are or what patents they're referring to, but the use of the word "decades" here is not obviously deceptive.

Great article. I personally put the blame on mobile devices and the "mobilification" of every computing application. Mobile-first mentality saw application designers ruthlessly culling anything that caused even the slightest friction. The result: slipstreamed applications that do the least necessary to appeal to the broadest audience.

Sadly, the mobilification mindset even sometimes impacts desktop-first applications, what few remain. The attack vector of choice is Electron hosting a mobile-first web app with a middling desktop breakpoint.

Ultimately, the author captures the same phenomenon, but I personally think it traces more specifically to the rise of mobile devices.

Precisely. If there was any universe where the headline were accurate (half the EPA range!), this would absolutely not be the first we've heard of it.

But in the real world, most Tesla drivers get within a reasonable error rate of the EPA rated range, and if they don't, they can understand why using the car's very detailed consumption app (e.g., driving fast, lots of quick accelerating, temperature).

Articles like this seem engineered to entice people predisposed with anti-EV or anti-Tesla bias.

Programmers and engineers have to apply this thinking holistically. The totality of waiting for slow software is enormous. Performance needs to be given a higher priority by more development teams.

I don't tend to consciously sum all of the time I spend waiting on slow software and slow services. But waiting on slow software impacts my subconscious in the moment, making me feel uncomfortable and frustrated with the system, as if it is antagonistic. If I do spend any time consciously thinking about it, I feel disdain for the engineers and project leaders who believed that what they had produced was good enough to ship.

With the processing capacity of modern computers, waiting for hundreds of milliseconds for trivial requests, or much longer for only modestly-complex requests is evidence of gross negligence on the part of the programmers.

> The supply and install problem clearly isn't that hard, auto makers have been doing it for many decades at this point.

Are you referring to the legacy auto manufacturers that still can't make EVs profitably in 2023? Perhaps Ford with its negative 58.9% EBIT margin on their EV division [1]?

Of course you can "solve" a more complex supply-chain and multiple vehicle configurations. It just costs more money. And therefore reduces your profit margin. If you do too much problem-solving of this type, your margin might end up negative. Not every EV manufacturer can subsidize their EV business with a high-margin ICE business.

[1] https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023...

Tribalism. Just like politics and brand preferences in other economic sectors (cars, computers, and so on).

I for one think both Android and iOS are pretty awful operating systems. I still look forward to a viable third option, and would especially enjoy a phone that functions more like an accessory or terminal to my computer, rather than a first-class computer in its own right.

This is probably its most important failure.

Ironically, the people who refuse to use the "Following" tab on Twitter are, I expect, the same people who are most dissatisfied with Twitter. If you use the Following tab, Twitter remains pretty damn great. It's when you allow an algorithm to feed you stuff that the experience can become something between unsatisfactory and toxic.

I don't think it's a matter of preference.

Of course I prefer doing all of my computing on my desktop computer. But I don't take my desktop computer with me to the grocery store. And I use Twitter to entertain myself when I'm waiting in line at the grocery store, for example. When I am at my desktop computer, I'm much less likely to be interested in using Twitter.

That said, one of many reasons I didn't bother creating a Threads account is precisely that reason: no desktop client. Unless forced, I won't use anything that is exclusively available on mobile devices.

I consider myself a pretty frequent Twitter user. I don't pay and I've never run into the daily limit.

Is this sarcasm?

If not, maybe wait more than 3 weeks before declaring it Twitter's successor.

Understood. I have no doubt it would become exhausting to follow people who are distracted by such meta-topics. I take some joy out of unfollowing people who are overly obsessed with topics I find uninteresting.

I don't care for his tweets or his political thoughts, but I personally think he has done more good through his companies than most others with similar resources. In my opinion, when Gates was still running Microsoft, he did considerably less "good" for humanity than Musk is doing now. And Musk's contemporaries (Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al) don't seem to be interested in doing much good either.

It's easy to be an armchair critic and say you would do more good if you had those resources at your disposal. But I will admit that I have never worked and will never work a quarter as hard as any of the names I've mentioned here. Despite my criticism of Gates, for example, he has done more good with his resources post-Microsoft than I expect I would have been able to do with the same.

> I'm not going to psychologically diagnose someone from afar, but I suspect she needs help of the type neither Musk nor Twitter nor Hackernews can provide.

I'm not a fan of this flavor of discourse, and frankly find it offensive. But I will tolerate it.

Aside from the feature changes, it seems about the same to me. I think it largely depends on who you follow and whether you use the "Following" or "For you" tab. I recommend the "Following" tab since this allows you to manage your feed by, unsurprisingly, selecting who you follow.

I appreciate this considerably more nuanced and thoughtful view of the modern history of Twitter.

So much coverage of Twitter since the Musk acquisition is entangled with partisan politics, ultimately in part thanks to Musk provoking such a reaction. That makes this post feel ever more illuminating and thoughtful—it avoids the partisan pitfalls and irrational extremism seen in virtually every other article on the topic.

I too don't agree with many of Musk's decisions with Twitter/X. I don't like the new name and thus far refuse to use it. I don't like the ads I see as a Twitter user. I have not (yet) paid for Twitter.

But on the other hand, I am thoroughly disinterested in the unhinged vitriol I see so often from Musk's haters. The incessant lazy discourse about how Twitter is dying, for either technical or other reasons. The ridiculous blindness to the awfulness of other social networks when critiquing Twitter (have you ever seen Reddit or Facebook?).

It's a shame journalists have been largely unable to cover Twitter as well as this former insider and I am thankful to Crawford for publishing this.

> 2560/1600 = 1.6 (this is a good aspect ratio, the perfect laptop has a ratio ≤ 1.6)

Not just laptops, but monitors in general should be 16:10 or taller. 16:9 only became popular thanks to the computer display industry naively adopting the aspect ratio of televisions. But 16:9 comes from the film industry and has nothing to do with computer productivity. It's a shame that so many monitor manufacturers still focus almost exclusively on 16:9 (or even wider, when width is easily achieved by multiple monitors, side-by-side). I'm fine with the wide options existing, but give me some taller options, too, please.

For whatever it's worth, you can also donate via mailed check, assuming you're in the US. This will avoid the 8% card processing fee.

I agree with you. Low-density desktop applications cause me more unease because there's more need to scroll to make sure I didn't miss something. It's especially egregious when the designers make the scrollbars invisible (appearing only on hover or use), meaning there's often no indication of more content available via scrolling. It breeds the habit of ritualistically scrolling each pane to make sure you're not missing something.

There's something psychological about the appearance of a low-density display as well. I can't quite explain it, but it causes me a bit of displeasure because it feels wasteful. There are so many pixels available but they aren't doing anything for me. I don't know why this causes me discomfort, but it does.

Finally, it's important for an application like a mail client to not lose sight of the fact that the way people use email varies. I personally use dozens of folders, meaning the density of the folder list should be as compact as reasonably possible so that I don't need to scroll.

I was prepared for disappointment, given the sad direction most desktop applications have been heading in the past decade. But admittedly, it looks pretty dang good. Looking forward to giving it a test drive!

It hit me that they may be listening to their users more than most desktop app developers when I scrolled to the section about display density. The overwhelming majority of modern desktop apps have exploded the use of white-space and grossly reduced the information density of applications. Mind you, I suspect I will personally want an even more dense setting than their current densest option. But having density settings demonstrated front and center gives me hope.

I'm also concerned that I will still want a traditional three-pane split view (folders at left, message list at top-right, message text at bottom-right). Many desktop users do not run their mail client fully maximized, so a horizontally-biased window size should not be assumed. I run Thunderbird on the left half of a single monitor, meaning it's taller than it is wide. A three-column view will probably not use that space well.

I'm guessing this is not an Electron app. If I am right, that alone deserves praise.

In sum, I am now cautiously optimistic!

I note the author added an external USB disk to act as the TrueNAS boot disk. I wonder if treating one of the M.2 disks as a boot disk is feasible. There are twelve M.2 slots in that kit, after all.

The key mitigating factor here when comparing to GitHub: GitLab is self-hostable, and in the self-hosted version has no user limits.

The limit discussed here only applied to the instance hosted by GitLab.

It is sad to see how many people in this thread will assume the absolute worst with respect to Tesla's FSD capabilities and then will accept this Level 3 announcement from Mercedes in the most charitable way possible. It requires little effort to achieve Level 3 in extremely constrained situations. For example, it would be almost trivial for any autonomy company to achieve "Level 3" at 5 miles per hour within a specific geography. 40 MPH with all of the other limitations of this system is simply not very interesting.

It seems many people in this thread are highly motivated by prior bias toward the negative on Tesla; far more than those of us who appreciate what Tesla is doing.