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neilpanchalon Searching for the best silicone USB cable

I went on the exact same quest. The answer is Belkin BoostCharge Flex. They have one version that’s flexible silicone and one that’s wrapped in braid. Check pictures and verify.

The description on Amazon was this: Belkin BoostCharge Flex Silicone USB-C to USB-C Charging Cable (1M/3.3FT) for iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, Galaxy S25, S24, Pixel 9 & 8, Nintendo Switch 2 & More with Cable Clip - Black

neilpanchalon Ioskeley Mono

Hey, Neil here. This one bothers me more than it should. :-(

I posted the situation on Twitter: https://x.com/usgraphics/status/1889932074758578686?s=20

neilpanchalon How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

> How is the noise and power usage?

I think they're same as SATA drives, just different interface. AFAIK they have the same physical dimensions and same internals.

neilpanchalon How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

It's pretty minimal and straightforward written in Haskell. Probably can write one from scratch with Claude now.

neilpanchalon How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

> 4x the 14 TB WD Elements Desktop.

I recommend staying away from SATA drives (huge consumer rush) and look for SAS drives on eBay, particularly HC520 Helium drives from HGST/WD. Need a SAS3008 PCIe adapter ($20) and a SFF-8643 splitter ($30). No backplane is required. Huge lots of decommissioned drives frequently appear. I bought Qty 10* of HC520 (12TB) SAS drives for $1000 about 3 weeks ago, avg age is about 2.5 years, still well within its rated lifetime.

Yea may be some of the stuff is fear mongering and cargo culting. I was told ECC is necessary for ZFS. When the article was written, it was cheap af (2024) to buy ECC RAM so not much consideration was given to it.

-- (*) I have no idea what to do with it. Anyone has any good idea for using 120TB space? I have about 40TB unused bandwidth in the datacenter, may be host a Debian mirror? Donate storage/bandwidth to Internet Archive? Please contact me, appreciate it.

neilpanchalon You wouldn't steal a font

Agree, I need to work on the full greek glyphset.

neilpanchalon You wouldn't steal a font

Yes, that's a typo. Need to redo the entire datasheet and possibly find a way to automate it using reportlab or some other PDF library. Right now, it is in InDesign and it is a pain to keep updating it.

neilpanchalon You wouldn't steal a font

Cyrillic is not supported so Berkeley Mono might not be suitable for your application. Are you building a Web app (Webfonts) or a Desktop/Mobile app (App license)? Please email me.

neilpanchalon You wouldn't steal a font

Hey, Berkeley Mono supports most Western European languages, can you tell me what's missing? I can add it. Btw, the tagline is about the aesthetics. :)

neilpanchalon Shaping ligatures in monospace fonts

There is a ligatures explorer to see exactly how glyphs relevant to a particular programming language of interest would look like, with or without ligatures: https://usgraphics.com/products/berkeley-mono/ligatures

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Typeface

They already are part of stylistic sets. So, for example, if you download a combination of 0 and 7 (regardless of which one), there are ss01-ss06 stylistic sets that encode other options in it.

The reason why we have a "font configurator" is because lot of terminals/IDEs/tools/OS, etc haven't got a full support for OpenType features. So we let users configure it as they like and it just works.

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Typeface

Idk about trial, but the full version has no issue with patching, try these instructions and see if it works: https://twitter.com/thorstenball/status/1629396583983853764

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Typeface

I also write Z and z with a stroke. And then someone on Twitter suggested we should add it as an option. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it despite of writing it that way! It’s coming.

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Typeface

Thank you! Website is going to get doubly refined soon. I’d like to develop a UI framework one day, but one that never ever changes in its core design. It just gets refined over time. I must say, it’s a real pleasure to design websites. Not just frontend, but database, all the Django stuff, domain models, I love the whole thing.

The font needs work, especially Bold cut. I completely redesigned all glyphs from scratch and trying to get to release it. It's been a learning experience. Also condensed version is coming with it. All upgrades will be free to existing customers.

Btw, I agree with OP about good samples. It also bothers me a little bit when I see huge zoomed in shots of typefaces: Good for grabbing attention, but bad functionally unless it’s a display typeface specifically for billboard/headline use. So I will go to town with samples in 12 point size. We have a few but clearly not enough.

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Typeface

Woahhh, I've never played around with APL before. Such an interesting language: https://tryapl.org/

I think most of the glyphs are straightforward, the ones that would take time are the greek symbols. Unable to commit at this time, we're already behind with Berkeley v2 release by 6 months! :-(

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Typeface

Fair criticism about samples, launching new update and it'll have better samples. Also, you're welcome to download the trial—best way to see how it looks in your specific setup.

I don't agree with your take on flourishes (in better terms, artistry). Every typeface has it. The process of designing a typeface is full of subjectivity and artistry.

neilpanchalon enron :: discover the power of WHY (2001)

Huge fan of Enron branding, it was done by none other than Paul Rand: https://www.paulrand.design/work/Enron.html

neilpanchalon Chart of Accounts for Startups

Yeah it's not interesting content, but I spent so much time organizing this—felt obligated to share it.

neilpanchalon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://neil.computer

Random hardware/software/typography/space/manufacturing topics.

neilpanchalon Gordon Moore has died

RIP. As an ex-Intel employee, this one stings. He was a godly figure internally and even during Intel's deteriorating years, engineers and technologists looked up to him as a constant north star of inspiration and engineering culture. Hope his demise gives a long pause to Intel's leadership and bring back some of good parts of the engineering culture from the 80's and 90's.

neilpanchalon Modern Mono

We wrote extensively about ligatures, pros and cons: https://berkeleygraphics.com/public-affairs/bulletins/BT-001...

Personally, I generally agree with you - ligatures add a layer of ambiguity. Toyed around with the idea of "precision ligatures", but it only works a subset of ligatures.

It's important to keep in mind that ligatures are at the presentation layer, i.e. when the glyphs are drawn. You can still copy and paste the text, underlying representation is still individual chars. Also, ligatures are optional, so why not; a lot of people love them.

neilpanchalon Ask HN: What's the best lecture series you've seen?

MIT 9.13 The Human Brain, Spring 2019: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60IKRN_pFpt...

Particularly about human vision and how visual information gets processed, priority and timing, etc. Some cool experiments (upside down face recognition).

neilpanchalon The limits of "computational photography"

> Ultimately, we are still beholden to the pigeonhole principle, and we cannot create information out of thin air.

*Looks up pigeonhole principle*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle

> If 5 pigeons occupy 4 holes, then there must be some hole with at least 2 pigeons.

This is so obvious.

> This seemingly obvious statement, a type of counting argument, can be used to demonstrate possibly unexpected results. For example, given that the population of London is greater than the maximum number of hairs that can be present on a human's head, then the pigeonhole principle requires that there must be at least two people in London who have the same number of hairs on their heads.

Oh...

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

We talked about ligatures in-depth in BT-001 bulletin: https://berkeleygraphics.com/public-affairs/bulletins/BT-001...

In short, we think 1 keypress = 1 symbol printed on the screen. That explicitness brings peace. But, we also think that ligatures are optional and many people like them (read about all the pros and cons in the link above).

That makes everyone happy.

neilpanchalon Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

Resonate with your frustration, we can do something about this. Duly noted.

neilpanchalon jQuery 3.6.2

We still use jQuery + jQuery UI on our website because it is basically battle tested through 15+ years.

https://jqueryui.com/

It is easy as hell. What's there to not like? I don't care to be called names or being old fashioned.

I also don't care about "right" tooling for frontend. As far as it works, it is robust and it is going to be around for many years, I am fine with it.

neilpanchalon Mona Sans and Hubot Sans

> Please don't design your own eye-melting garbage, for my sake.

I think there is still so much room to experiment with Grotesk typefaces. Perhaps the frustration is caused by everygoing going Druk in Magazine design and custom Corporate typography that's just incredibly...corporate. Every other grotesk fork of Akzidenz tends to follow Helvetica's path and the New York aesthetic. Public apathy is understandable.

The other fork of Akzidenz is Univers and its derivates; they are wonderful, especially for technical communication. I can't pinpoint why, perhaps it is nostalgia, but perhaps it is its formality and the way it is kerned by Adrian. Genius. I wrote about it on HN a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19621544

There are only a couple of decent typefaces that are alternatives to Univers. Unica77 and Swiss 721, both again trying to bring Helvetica into the Univers business.

So, I've taken up the task of propelling Univers forward. I hope it won't melt your eyes.

neilpanchalon Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

I designed a typeface and while small, the impact of bringing joy and productivity to people is greatly satisfying: https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/

neilpanchalon Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

Something that converts abstract glyphs to bezier curves and projects that to your eyes deserves attention and care. Typefaces bring the abstract idea of what a glyph is semiologically, to the physical 2D space. Made up of bezier curves, the have to abide by conventions but have considerable room in expressivity as well as design intent for a specific purpose. Typefaces are fascinating and the process of designing them is underrated and unappreciated by public at large. Billions of people rely on them, they're everywhere and you interact with typefaces all day, everyday.

neilpanchalon Dear JetBrains, Don't mess with your UI

Feedback noted, I don't think the new JetBrains UI is out for testing. I need to find time to write an extremely detailed post mortem of a user interface gone wrong. I did one for Apple a while ago although not as detailed as I'd like: https://neil.computer/notes/apple-ux-ui-is-regressing/ and another rant on Google's mute button: https://neil.computer/notes/oh-sorry-i-was-on-mute/.

More spanking is needed, there cannot be enough.