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drvortex

104 karma · joined October 15, 2013

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drvortex··on Show HN: We built a modern research paper reader
I would suggest that you pay close attention to what kind of 'academic' you are targeting.

In my opinion, the needs of STEM researchers are very different from those of the humanities. STEM researcher tend to use citations to substantiate pre-existing information, almost never have footnotes, and typically have schematics/flowcharts/graphs in their documents.

A good editor should be able to cross-reference citations, figures, handle SVG smoothly and definitely have Mermaid/MathJax support.

drvortex··on Show HN: We built a modern research paper reader
Do you have cite as you wrote functionality implemented ? Current research paper tools like Zotero do fine for the organisation and management part. The major limitations are poor integration with text editors and word processors.
drvortex··on My Obsidian note-taking workflow
I think it is just that Obsidian has a nerd vibe. Like Obsidian is to Notion what Neovim is to VSCode. It isn’t immediately obvious why it is better, but one of them is more l33t hax0r.

I used Obsidian for 2 years. But I ditched it because it was local only. And it’s sync capabilities (without storage) cost more than an entire office site + cloud storage subscription package. Ridiculou that they expect 8 Euro per month just to sync (not even store) my data.

I now use UpNote. Which has cloud sync, works cross platform and has a one time purchase option that is less than 50 bucks

drvortex··on Show HN: CryptexVault – Decentralized Password Manager
Good idea. No extension for browser to use Autofill visible on the website. No mobile clients visible. Unfortunately, that's a deal breaker as there is no reason for me to switch away from Bitwarden.
drvortex··on We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
Your code is not in that thing. That thing has merely read your code and adjusted its own generative code.

It is not directly using your code any more than programmers are using print statements. A book can be copyrighted, the vocabulary of language cannot. A particular program can be copyrighted, but snippets of it cannot, especially when they are used in a different context.

And that is why this lawsuit is dead on arrival.

drvortex··on Systems that defy detailed understanding
What a long winded article on what has been known to scientists for decades as "emergence". Emergent properties are systems level properties that are not obvious/predictable from properties of individual components. Looking and observing one ant is unlikely to tell you that several of these creatures can build an anthill.
drvortex··on Show HN: Minimal new tab page for Chrome and Firefox
5$ per month for sync? Are you really kidding me ?

Firefox and Chrome both already sync bookmarks, why are you not just letting the browser sync it?

drvortex··on CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university
And yet, most people do not care.

The elephant in the room is, did the gene editing work? If yes, are those babies protected from HIV?

If yes...the world is not the same anymore.

drvortex··on Microsoft attempts to spin its role in counterfeiting case
There is no spin here. The fellow is remorseless and distributed software that he did not own, nor was lecensed to distribute, violating the license agreements of both Dell and Microsoft.

No sympathy here. Also, clickbait headline.

drvortex··on Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
The block is indeed in place, but trivially circumvented using a VPN.

Please e careful with your mirror. You are now susceptible to the same lawsuit as the original Project Gutenberg. I am not sure where you are in the world, but Germany has legal assistance treaties with the US/UK/Scandanavia, all EEC and Schengen countries.

https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/108th-congress/27/d... https://www.mlat.info/mlat-index

drvortex··on Twitter Killing Its Mac App
Because of జ్ఞా ?
drvortex··on Show HN: Sundown – an alternative to Markdown
How often will we reinvent LaTeX ?
drvortex··on Chrome is Not the Standard
Oh yes. The same could be said about IE. In fact, I personally have no problems with IE implementing new features. The problem with IE was never that it was standards-incompliant. Heck, they were the de facto standard and there software used even today that won't run on anything but IE.

The problem with IE was that it was a shitty bloated browser. And to be honest, nothing shook its dominance before Chrome. Not even Firefox.

drvortex··on Chrome is Not the Standard
No, it doesn't have complete dominance. But it has more share than all the other players combined. https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

That is a dominating position making it the de facto standard, even if not absolute.

drvortex··on Chrome is Not the Standard
Well, what can you do?

Mozilla has a very unique problem. It's most ardent and loyal users are technically savvy. They expect a high quality, privacy-respecting, ad-free product.

But, here's the catch, they will not pay for it. How does Mozilla survive?

Google finances Chrome through its Search/Ad business. Safari and IE costs are bundled in the cost of the devices/OS they are on.

How should Mozilla survive? Should they go the shareware route and have a paid copy for 20$ ?

They have to make money somehow.

drvortex··on Chrome is Not the Standard
Standards are irrelevant to pragmatism. De facto standards are what is important.

By virture of sheer popularity, Chrome is the de facto standard. And if they have provided anything that becomes useful or popular, then by virtue of popularity of that feature in what is already the post popular browser, makes that feature part of the de facto standard.

The post is just pedantic whining about how something isn't according to the written word in some document written some years ago by a bunch of people that the average user of the standard does not even know.

I understand the value of standardization. Everything should be standardized. But what the standard should be is completely another question. I would say that all enhancements/popular features should be standard. At least that way, we'll have more people happier, rather than follow the least common denominator approach where there is a compromise that leaves no one happy.

drvortex··on Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section
By that logic, GTK/Qt, basically any cross platform GUI library etc. is not 'native'.
drvortex··on Show HN: Telescope, a news reader app
Nice, but really, it is a narrow column on a 4K screen. Can you make it adapt to screen sizes so that it can use at least 80% of the screen?
drvortex··on Show HN: TinyMCE + Evernote + RegEx Search
Does not run offline. Need notes app to work in offline conditions.

Take a cue from Onenote/Evernote/Keep. A notes application MUST run even in shady/non existent internet connection.

drvortex··on Firefox Multi-Account Containers
So this basically replicates the functionality provided by https://sessionbox.io/

Is multi-process here already?

drvortex··on Show HN: Desktop all in one messenger
Oh God. It's Trillian/Pidgin all over again.
drvortex··on Show HN: Coffee++, idea for a language that compiles into C++
What is the point ? If it is just academic curiosity that is fine. But if it compiles one to one to C++, then it is just a different and more Python-like syntax for C++ ?
drvortex··on Show HN: Tux.io – a (now working) Linux desktop in your browser
So basically, ChromeOS.
drvortex··on Sylpheed – a simple, lightweight but featureful e-mail client
I cannot understand the relevance of an email client, now that browsers can do email. It may be my workflow, so I will ask:

Is there any scenario where an email client would be necessary - i.e. a browser based solution will not work?

drvortex··on Show HN: HNView – Browser extension providing a better style for hacker news
Why is something an extension, that can just be a Greasemonkey script ?
drvortex··on Show HN: Keypirinha, a new semantic launcher for keyboard ninjas
Kind of pointless since these days, Win + "typing" does exactly the same thing.
drvortex··on Ask HN: Is Python dying?
Techincally, Numpy and SciPy are C and Fortran extensions to Python, not Python code.
drvortex··on Ask HN: Is Python dying?
Julia? Now you're just making me laugh. Julia has a lot of potential but won't even begin to scratch Python for about 5 more years. Scientific programming is very very addicted to its tools. There is a reason even SciPy (for Python) is compiled Fortan (yes Fortan!) code. R is king for data science and the only reason it lost ground to Python is that R is a one trick pony compared to jack of all trades Python.
drvortex··on Show HN: Htop 2.0 released, now cross-platform
To be fair, it is still only for POSIX-y systems. Not cross platform in the conventional sense.
drvortex··on Show HN: Python to C++14 transpiler
Strictly you are right. However, by the strict definition of a compiler, an interpreter is nothing but a sort-of "real time compiler".

But a compiler has come to mean a program that translates source-code into machine code.

By this new understanding, a transpiler is a combination of a compiler and a decompiler with different input and output languages.

So po-tay-toes, po-taa-toes. No one cares, we know what is meant by transpiler.

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