codalan

It wasn't the feature-bloat that made me give up on EN. It was the broken sync, the difficulty getting an export of my notes from their server, the brutally sluggish mobile and desktop apps, etc.

Obsidian doesn't seem to be going down that road. Using another provider to store the notes (Dropbox, S3, Blob, self-hosted disk space, etc.) takes care of issues #1 and #2. Making this an optional plugin answer #3.

This is pretty amazing. They've basically implemented some of the best features of old Evernote, w/o fng it up like Evernote.

Reminds me of a place in Memphis called Dyer's Burgers. They've continually refreshed 100+ year old grease and reuse it for frying their food: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/44635

When the mRNA vaccines came out, one of the first things that came to mind was that it would fast-track a whole new class of mRNA based cancer treatment. Without the Covid pandemic, we probably would have been many years away from seeing this happen.

I do, and in some cases, I still get ads.

Moleskine notepads. But hey, it was more reliable and quicker to use than their software offering.

The previous issues were bad enough for me to drop Evernote as a paying customer.

I would get notes that would not sync correctly, forcing me to resolve it by hand. Even after doing that, it would still have sync conflicts. This was core functionality that just didn't work.

During this time, they were busy jamming in features I definitely didn't want or need. Every release would be a slower, buggier version of its previous incarnation.

It was during this time frame that a lot of people jumped ship. The app was so bloated and buggy by that point that even OneNote seemed like a viable option.

It didn't help that Evernote made it as difficult as possible to get your notes out of their system. It took several download attempts to successfully get my archive out of there. It might have also been due to the large number of people leaving their platform.

The handwriting was on the wall when they started selling knick-knacks on their website. Things like Evernote branded Moleskine notepads and dress socks. It's like they completely abandoned their core competency and went off in some left-field marketing direction.

It's a real shame, too, because Evernote was an amazing app when it first came out.

I'm giving org-mode a spin these days on my desktop. Need to figure out if there's a way to sync/view it on my Android device, but I'm getting kind of tired of dealing with all the different, proprietary SaaS note taking services that go to shit after a few years. At least with Emacs and org-mode, that's one less thing to deal with.

Would need to be an agreed-upon message encrypted with the vandal's private key.

1. Person wanting defacement would indicate the amount for the bounty, along with the message to be posted on the defaced property

2. Vandal contacts payer and agrees to conditions. He/she also gives the client their public key

3. Vandal performs defacement, then add the specified message to it, encrypted in his or her private key

4. Vandal notifies the person paying the bounty that the job is complete, sending him/her a picture of the defacement with encrypted message

4. Payer decrypts message, verifies it matches, then pays out the agreed upon bounty to the vandal

Yeah, I've been thinking about just soldiering in a new LED, but haven't had time. Replacing it with a socket is a better idea, though. Same amount of effort the first time, far less when it comes time to replace the bulb again...

I bought a small Toshiba EM925A5A-BS microwave, which was top ranked by The Wirecutter at the time.

Two years later, the light begins flickering. Now it just doesn't come on at all.

I google up how to replace the lightbulb. Turns out, you can't and this issue is common amongst owners of these microwaves. It's amazing they can't spend the extra dollar or two in components and make the bulb replaceable. I imagine a lot of these Toshiba microwaves are in dumps now.

I'd have a hard time trying to give this thing away with a defective light. I'll probably be stuck with it finally stops working altogether, and then it will end up in a landfill.

It's only ugly because it was meant to be a federation of different programming paradigms. You can mix low level C calls with homegrown RAII frameworks, or mix traditional OOP with functional programming. Once you start throwing in preprocessor macros, meta programming, and templates, you can have a codebase that is incredibly complex to understand and maintain.

As for the header/implementation separation, I always thought it was a good idea to have that flexibility. I've worked in codebases where the compilation units were fairly large and complex and would be implemented in separate files. This would be similar to partials in C# I've also worked with some code that would determine the target compilation units at build time. Not saying it was the best approach at the time, but it was one option.

If anything scares off people from C++, it would definitely be the breadth of the language, though. You could work in C++ for over ten years and possibly not even encounter or use half of the functionality it provides. And because of it's breadth, going from one C++ codebase to another could look completely different. Especially when looking at something written for a Unix/Linux/Posix system vs Windows.

Pixel 7 Pro, but I wouldn't avoid it because their dialer sucks. It's still a really good phone when compared to the iPhone/Samsung Galaxy/etc., and it's the only Android phone series I'd consider in the future.

When I had a Samsung Galaxy, I installed the full suite of Simple apps onto it because the included apps sucked so bad. Simple gets it mostly right from a UI/UX perspective, and I was happy to support the author by purchasing the apps in the Play store.

The pool of C++ devs hasn't dried up.

They're just working on other things in other languages.

If there was strong demand for embedded C/C++ devs that paid well, I wouldn't be doing C# REST APIs on Azure. Not that I don't enjoy working on APIs, but I do like working with bare metal more.

Pixel 7 Pro.

Right now, this is my only major gripe on an otherwise great phone.

I bought a SIM in Brazil a few years ago and was bombarded with text spam within minutes of putting the card into my phone, most of it from the carrier.

The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape.

Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feature or to learn about X, when I'm urgently trying to make a call. It's so f-ing rude and intrusive. And it's designed to trick you into enabling shit without giving you time to think it over.

It's such a scummy thing to do, but hey, it's Google. Imagine having to make an emergency phone call, but you can't until you tap through all the prompts. Google basically broke core functionality to do this, and there's no way to disable this nonsense.

Seriously, I just want my phone to be a phone, not some feature riddled shit app that does everything (poorly).

Also good to know these patterns if you're dealing with a lot of legacy code, particularly 199x - 201x code that implemented a lot of these patterns.

Some of them are straightforward (factory, adapter). Some of them are almost never used (flyweight). Some are more particular to a programming language; you might see a lot of visitor patterns in C++ code, for instance, but IIRC, that wouldn't come up in Smalltalk because it supported paradigms like double dispatch out of the box.

It's amazing how many times I saw the Singleton pattern between 2000 - 2012 or so, and in almost every case, it degenerated into a global variable that was used by everything in a component or system.

It would have been more apt to name it the Simpleton pattern, after most of their practitioners.

This stuff started to go away w/ modern DI frameworks. In fact, I don't really see much of the GoF patterns anymore, particularly ones for managing the order of instantiation of objects. Everything in the C# world has been abstracted/libraried/APIed away. But I wouldn't be surprised if GoF patterns are still prevalent in C/C++/SmallTalk code.

It is. The NYT Real Estate section is a pretty sickening read for most of the 99% who aren't totally disconnected from reality and don't have a million plus in cash to toss away on a second home.

Every time I've read that section, it felt like product placement for luxury home realtors and commercial property owners.

I think it depends on the phone.

The Google Pixel series seems pretty solid for reliability. I have a Pixel 7 Pro and it's been really good so far in terms of software and build quality. I strongly prefer it to my iPhone 13 Pro, which I'm currently selling off.

But iPhone vs Samsung Galaxy? iPhone wins by a mile. I never got used to the custom interface Samsung loaded onto those phones, and hated that it included Samsung-specific apps that just duplicated those already available by default on stock Android.

Thanks for explaining the design choice.

9 times out of 10, I don't watch videos, but that's just my usage pattern with most things.

Not a fan of the modal popup that seems to force you to either click "Continue" or "Not Interested". You can't ESC it away and it completely blocks out all the relevant info about the trip.

How do I know if I'm interested or not if I can't even read your own description on the page and make a decision?

I'm waiting for small scale nuclear energy to become more prevalent. That will probably be the big technological change that will get us off fossil fuels once and for all. Right now, if you don't live somewhere where hydroelectric or solar are options, you are pretty much stuck on coal fuel power plants.

Even hydroelectric has negative impacts on the environment, particular salmon habitat.

It's more than that. It's the obsessive monetization of common products.

I was fine with the crappy plastic stuff we had 20 years. There was some expectation that a refrigerator works as a refrigerator, a toaster as a toaster, a bathroom scale as a bathroom scale. It might break after 3-5 years, but I could buy another for cheap while trying to remain ignorant of the environmental impact.

Fast forward to today. The core functionality is incidental to the real goal of these devices: Data collection and advertising.

A refrigerator might work as a refrigerator, but it's really there to spy on my eating habits and pump ads through the monitor. In many ways, it's a refrigerator in name only. The core functionality is secondary.

There could be a million updates to the refrigerator's firmware, but all in the mission of making sure the DC and adware software keeps working. Maybe there will be one relevant to actual refrigeration itself.

And there isn't any way out of this. One could propose buying a fridge from the 1950s, but do I want to pay for the power consumption of that device?

It's just sad to see that in today's society, there isn't more outrage about core functionality not working as intended. At a minimum, I could turn a blind eye to DC/ads if that toaster actually toasted bread. But I can't even be guaranteed that anymore.

I would honestly just move right on to Linux Mint. If they're familiar with Windows, they will be right at home with the Cinnamon DE.

I'm really impressed with this distro and use it as my own daily driver. One of the few times where I do very little tweaking to get the UI/UX just right for my own preferences.

It is difficult to get a person to understand something, when his/her bonus depends on not understanding it.

Most of these bonuses are probably tied with frivolous, often highly unpopular and unwanted, feature updates. I doubt people get bonuses (or as large bonuses) for fixing usability bugs or improving quality.

The irony is that if a vendor can't provide a consistent experience every time, why should I remain loyal to that vendor on the next update?

If Windows is going to change their user interface every other year, why would I relearn their UX-du-jour when I can just re-learn once on a Mac and be good for a few years (if not longer)?

If I use hosted Gmail and my UI changes every other month, it just tells me that I should host elsewhere where the UX is more stable.

If you abuse users long enough with this everchanging, constant-beta UI nonsense, you are just telling them to move on to a platform that isn't so unstable, where you only have to learn the UX once, not every X months.

I don't even think they're F1000-first anymore.

W11 is going to lose a lot of people, and some of those will be in that category.

It's not that updates are necessarily bad.

It's when they try to launder in a bunch of "feature" updates (i.e. more spyware, more crapware) with needed security updates.

They force the user to make a decision: Do I skip this update and avoid having new "features" from crippling my machine, or do I download the update to prevent my machine from being hacked?

If vendors really gaf, they would make is so that you could download needed security updates w/o the rest of the garbage. But then they couldn't force more malware on you.