ics

Roughly 7-8 years ago I was going to be traveling and didn't have a suitable machine to take with me so I went online and found an Acer CB3 for $100 new– I think the retail then was double that, maybe a little more. I bought two, one for myself and one for my mom who was struggling with her aging MacBook both in operation and physical heft. I immediately dropped crouton onto mine and made it my Linux daily driver for the next year.

It ran xfce, emacs, and firefox like butter, silently, and never got warmer than a good lap friend. Battery life for (literally) days. It looked good too, with a very simple white case and sturdy black keycaps. The trackpad even was fine. When my work started to involve heavy graphics and multimedia again my daily use dropped, mostly replaced by a newer Mac, and was eventually relegated to closet storage not to be charged or even turned on for at least two years.

Now it's 2023, my mom stopped using hers maybe two years ago in favor of a new and even more portable iPad. I have a daughter who is 3 approaching 4. She's interested in computers, tries to touch type on my desk computer, and is no longer a walking hazard to all non-stationary objects. I dug the old Chromebook out of the closet, plugged it in, and the damn thing works. Once the OS connected to the internet it was kind enough to inform me that its version of ChromeOS was EOL and and that there were no newer supported versions for my hardware. But it works. Even browsing the web normally has no issues beyond the occasional spruce goose'd site which could probably bring down the heftiest workstation anyway. It hasn't been locked out of any usage that I can tell but hopefully soon I'll be able to sit down and see to removing ChromeOS entirely for a fresh linux install.

There isn't much of a point to all that I've typed out besides some personal nostalgia. I tend to agree with all the comments which come up about Google's worsening business practices in general, surveillance-enabling behaviour, lack of product support, etc. While they seem to still be investing in it, I hope this product space doesn't eventually die in Google's hands. It's disappointing to me that there are not multiple vendors trying to offer something similar: a streamlined linux desktop experience on decent hardware that isn't fussy and is cheap.

On iOS, I don't think the term MIDI is mentioned anywhere in app. Unless you recalled it from the app store description then the Import button seems quite mysterious; average users might mistake it for something to interpret and extract notes from MP3s or whatever.

I have this site bookmarked for fun: https://bitmidi.com/ If I showed this app to some friends, the first thing they'd go looking for would be some video game music which is a whole different set than classical. Considering that, it would be nice to have separate libraries or playlists for genre organization. Offer some pre-populated as IAP, e.g. Classical is default but you can get popular songs, SNES tracks, etc. for $1-2 per collection if doable with individual licenses.

On macOS 13.5, entering the search shows no obvious way to end/return. However I just pressed Enter and that took me back, which was unexpected. So it works, just oddly mapped I think. On iOS the search+cancel is just fine.

For the sections, I noticed that but still find it odd that the home library view doesn't actually show me... the full library. You have to discover pieces by composer which I missed at first. BTW, there is a typo on both mac/iOS versions where the header is missing an r in "Lib[*r]ary".

Some suggestions and features based on personal preference, so I'm putting in a separate comment.

  - Put an "Import MIDI file" button in the Imported Files section
  - Star or bookmark icon, pick one for favorites. Currently one is used on the library screen and a different one in the song view.
  - Sidebar for the different sections with hide/show toggle, for example I don't like to scroll through stacked Sections and don't really care to see Recents at all
  - Options for thumbnail, tab display could be one but some variations would be interesting:
    - Color based on tempo
    - Dot-based graphic (primarily aesthetic, but recognizable at a glance)
    - Size S/M/L option which assigns per section
  - Tags for tracks, ideally color-codable. Maybe I want to tag something "mastered", or "difficult", "somber", etc.
    - After entering the search box, escape key or outside click should dismiss and return to the home layout. Currently the sections get reorganized, Favorites and Recents disappear and Pieces shows up at the bottom, but I can't get back without closing the app.
  - "Choose Random" button to open a piece
  - Composer interface, create new pieces from scratch or modify from the library using something similar to the playing interface
    (n.b. a decent interface for this if no keyboard/midi-in would be present a 1+-octave keyboard with some modifiers, so multiple key taps can create individual notes, optional rest interval, or extend a continuous note. Row-level actions so you can duplicate creating repeats, shift up/down, etc. Slight differences between macOS/iOS.)
  - Allow user editable text, emoji, or color highlight in the play scroll. Noting a section of the piece is one obvious use but it could be handy for several uses.
  - (semi serious) watch integration to vibrate on tempo.
  - Music box mode, notes only play as you scroll (I see you did this actually. My daughter is gonna love this...)

The pricing model is confusing at first and not very clear until you start trying to use the app (tried the macOS version for now). The App Store description does not mention the subscription and what features it unlocks, and in the app it doesn't trigger until you try to play a song. If you dismiss the window, you actually have to go back to playing a song (and wait) to see it again as there isn't a settings pane or other trigger just to see the subscription page. A few suggestions on that front:

  - Put the pricing either on a splash window after opening for the first time OR in a message tile on the library screen
  - Include certain (full) songs in the free version and give them a badge of some sort ("free", "included", etc.)
  - Put a badge in the toolbar indicating whether you are in a free or paid mode
  - Make it clear if a subscription is valid for iOS *and* macOS or if they are separate (2x the cost) (edit: downloaded on iOS and it's not limiting anything so it must be a universal subscription. Put that early in the description for sure.)

I put a piano in my apartment in 2020, the year the app appears to have been first released. Several people in my household were looking for something exactly like this to practice and never came across it, though we did get suckered into a few $10/month or $75/year subscriptions for other things that ended up barely getting used. If the pricing stays the same but is much clearer to people I believe you could get decent conversion from a little bit of targeted advertising.

Besides that, the import dialog could be less spartan. It is not indicated in the app itself that it takes MIDI files only. Normal users may not know what a MIDI file is at first but you might be surprised at how many would learn and go seek those if given a tiny bit of guidance. Tons of non-technical people have learned to get their hands on playable guitar tabs the same way.

As for the playing interface, I like it quite a bit. Plenty of people will comment about how anything getting in the way of becoming an expert in sight reading is somehow evil (hyperbole) but this is silly. I could easily recommend this app to friends who played Guitar Hero as kids and now want to play along to stuff on the piano or keyboard– hey, we all got older and maybe acquired more "mature" instruments with black and white keys. I used to read standard sheet music for chamber/orchestra but it's been years and frankly it's the least important skill for the type of music that I play. However I do have a piano and once in a while want to play something without getting into a lesson on sheet music especially since what I used to read had far less range than a piano.

App Store note: searching for "piano tabs" the app doesn't show up even after a lot of scrolling. "piano tabs learning & practice" finds it as the top result. I am a fan of the plain name; it's short and self-explanatory to the point that I imagine people do randomly search those terms without knowing about your app. That should be a good thing but in practice it seems the discoverability isn't there which is worth looking into.

I for one was tickled the first time I paid an NYC parking ticket online and had to add it to my cart, as if they might upsell me on some other more serious violation. Act now before it's too late!

That’s why you assign all of them random names which are recorded in a separate BitWarden store. That one only opens with a password which is “YUBIKEY”.

What was awful about it? It's been a while since setting up but my config uses it to pluck the important bits from my Org library into SQLite as I edit; it works well enough and wasn't difficult to set up or understand. Admittedly it is relegated to this one step so that everything else can query docs with SQL but I was quite happy that the API exists so as not to do the parsing myself with the mistakes and minor deviations that would entail.

I would have to dig through the old plan details again but they had a pretty similar example to our situation where they estimated you would owe essentially the entire bill minus some copay amounts, i.e. $100k - $300, which is funny but depressing. Their version of emergency coverage would have come in to play perhaps if one of us had been hit by a car and were bleeding out on the street.

Underrated technique. I’ve used it similarly to generate scripts and it works great when used with care (error checking generally must happen at a different stage).

I wish this wasn't such a commonly shared opinion. Too defeatist, in my view. Craigslist is spartan, sure, but there are less extreme examples such as McMaster-Carr. They've had the same design more or less since 2010 at least and it is usually considered both functional and tastefully current. I think in the early 2000s they had a different design which was fine, and they obviously skipped the whole "web 2.0" era of design.

I loved my previous HMO because I was in a union and the (huge) premium was mostly covered by the company however it's really never that simple. Changing jobs and insurance companies means all of a sudden all of my previous doctors are out of network and now I have to pick and choose which ones are worth sticking with while eating the out-of-network costs and which are replaceable. Multiply that by several family members and it's a nightmare.

Continuing the counterexample, recently my daughter had to be hospitalized literally a month after changing to a PPO. Amazingly, our $175,000 bill ended up costing me just $300 because she was admitted to inpatient care. If I had been on my previous HMO, it likely would have either cost $50k for the out-of-network, out-of-pocket maximum (assuming nothing exempt from that even...) or worse, delayed getting care while attempting to figure out any of that on the spot.

Yes however the quality varies wildly. In my two previous jobs, the HMO options were $100/mo and $400/mo respectively for a family (2 adults + unlimited dependents). In my partner's current position, the HMO option is $2000/mo– not a typo. All three plans offering essentially the same benefits but obviously the first two mentioned were carrying a much higher portion of the premiums.

Many variables indeed but it's an interesting thought to consider. In my experience friends and relatives with autism are hard askers and those with diagnosed ADHD/OCD/related are all guessers without exception.

The only reason I started using Figma was because of how annoyed I was at the Sketch licensing as a paying customer.

I completely agree that such a thing should not be US-only. There would need to be a clear distinction between one-gov't backdoor and voluntary regulatory certification, because ultimately the goal would be for other countries to follow suit and provide similar/identical certifications. You could look to standards bodies to provide standard implementation details on what "firmware escrow" is, what exact formats and files must be included, etc. IEEE, ISO, JIS, DIN, and all of them could write or adopt the document. But actually running the service and providing the certification is a little closer to a patent office than organizing standards which is why I propose doing it federally. Think Energy Star (which is a US gov't program based on EPA standards) which has been implemented successfully outside of the US.

Framed like that, it sounds terrible. However, consider this:

[1] This discussion is about a federal agency providing certification of products essentially in the form of a stamp (on a device, website, etc.). Nothing is stopping a vendor from committing to and offering the same thing but without government involvement. This could easily be a selling point for the paranoid. Something something blockchain and smart contracts...

[2] Even though we're discussing IoT devices, it's not necessary that they be capable of updating over the air 24/7. Creative engineers could probably devise a method to prevent complete remote takeover by anyone holding the keys– physical switches, additional authentication required during the support period, etc.

[3] Personally, I think the federal government getting access to keys for any IoT device made/sold in the US is the only part of this idea that could already be happening. They can knock on doors or mail subpoenas, plant moles, etc. I would be much more comfortable with a technical solution on the physical device than any presumption of privacy in the current state.

The OEM could be allowed to choose their recertification period, perhaps with slight differences in requirements. Perhaps even different options offered by company size. For example 1-5 employee companies might get a "no recertification, provided as-is" option which releases automatically 3 years after filing. Vendors who re-certify every 6 months could get an extra mark on their stamp or whatever. There are tons of possibilities honestly, and though I've been thinking about it for a long time writing it is much easier to come up with more.

As a recently returned rsync.net customer, I was a bit surprised to peruse the docs and see that Fuse/sshfs is still up as a recommended option for Mac integration (see https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/mac_sshfs.html). A few months ago this led me down the path of trying ExpanDrive/StrongSync, but this is the first I've heard of Mountain Duck (love Cyberduck though). I'm looking forward to giving it a spin now but if it has been working well for you please consider updating this page for others. Happy customer otherwise!

Possibly weird idea: federal firmware escrow. The OEM gets to put a stamp on their product after submitting firmware source/keys to the FCC. When the OEM either declares the product not supported or provides no updates for X length of time, the files are automatically published to a public repository. Perhaps there is an appropriate license which says essentially that it is almost public domain, with an exception (or fee?) to use it for any purpose other than supporting the lifetime of an existing product.

As others have stated, free software is one way of giving the public ability to keep things up to date but that's almost like the government saying people are allowed to clean up pollution. It doesn't put any pressure on companies to behave better.

Another issue is build-ability of open source code. If an OEM submits firmware source and keys to a third party, even regularly, who really knows whether it is actually functional and complete. Automated tests or sample hardware are possible ideas but have their own failure modes and could be difficult for to implement solely for this purpose.

Another weird idea for the above. If one requirement was deterministic builds, then in addition to source/keys, a suitable toolchain to build could also be required such that the repository stewards would only need to run exactly what the OEM provides, and if the checksums don't match then it means they are not in compliance.

At least the do not disturb modes have reasonable options and actually work. My last few months of using Windows at work I just stopped trying to disable crap because every time I would wake up to a forced update it would just reset anyway.

Off topic but damn, Media Temple. Brings back deep nostalgia for the pre-and-becoming Web 2.0 era of the web. I still have a red iPod shuffle and some other miscellaneous swag from participating in their beta programs.

Pretty similar in Milan from what I could tell (traveled there frequently before the pandemic). Although there were a handful of coffee shops that seemed to be accepting a specialty coffee angle where for 5 euros you could get a distinctly non-Italian offering.

I'd bet that 90% of Teams users had never used Slack and never would have through their employers. To them, Teams is like all software in that everybody can complain but it's still much more advanced than... Lync.

I was almost willing to bet this article would just about a new Teams update.

I've been buying split toe socks for years now, when they weren't so readily available. A tip to anyone else curious: you can find many different styles/colors in varying quality on Amazon, Temu, Aliexpress, etc. from no-name brands. In general the quality is quite good, at least on par with major brand socks and if you're less confident then just pay attention to the return policy. The main thing to look for is 100% cotton (or natural fiber of your choice).

Edit: I posted this primarily because they're a niche product which translates to niche-consumer prices sometimes. However you don't need to pay more than $2-3/pair to have pretty nice, durable socks of this kind.

Generally it does at least in my US model. "The system is set to avoid unnecessary alarms if the system detects the vehicle behavior is intentional judging from the operation of the accelerator or turn signal." from https://www.mazda.com/en/archives/safety2/active_safety/las/

There are still scenarios where it can be an issue, for example when you need to "peek" through the lane to see if an overtake is possible safely. In this case it requires driver judgement on when to activate the turn signal. You may activate early or when committed, I don't think either is necessarily wrong.

I don't know the other commenter's scenario but don't doubt what they described. To pull another example out of my hat: bendy mountain roads (e.g. western Connecticut, minimal elevation changes), car ahead is moving slowly due to lack of power, heavy load, etc. Assume driving conditions and road lines are clear, no camera or sensor obstructions. The system is automatically active while following the bend and will attempt to keep on course. As you approach a rather wide curve (lanes are also widened, with extra shoulder) it is an opportunity to ride closer to the centerline in order to see past the vehicle and overtake. If you do that without putting on your blinker first, the system will attempt to correct while you're in the turn. Depending on how you react this can be jarring as the wheel is vibrating and you have to decide whether to commit to let the system correct, correct the correction, or commit to the overtake.

I chalk this up more to my own lack of familiarity with the system early on and not a defect per se. The wheel vibration is a very odd sensation to me on turns likely because on older cars I'd start to worry about tires or mechanical issues.

> From what I hear it's very much to do with a maker's implementation

Right, if I had to condense my issues into something more constructive it is just that: if regulators want to pursue a mandate for these systems, they should also work on establishing testing criteria and specifications that cover the many different conditions drivers face and reduces variation between manufacturers as possible. Not an easy task.

To give a quick example: another commenter in this thread states that lane assist only kicks in at 35mph. That is true in some models but not all which could lead to some nice surprises. Further, the speed limit in NYC is 25mph so it's not unusual if the road surface is decent to be cruising closer to 30. Unless there's a threshold for activation, you might be walking a fine line between "safety on"/"safety off" and any resulting corrections it might make.

It is on by default in my 2020 Mazda3. After giving it (and all the other safety features) a chance for several months it's muscle memory to flip off all safety features during city driving. Thankfully there's a single button that does that, just left of the steering wheel.

Just https://heyfocus.com which I must have installed through Setapp, as I don't remember paying for it. It has a scripting capability so in theory I might be able to do something to prevent it from triggering when I'm active in a form.