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My brother has a 16, and it’s been good for him. It is big and chunky, more so with the GPU module; only a few paragraphs into the blog post I felt the author was trying to fit a big square peg in a round hole, and then blaming the square peg for being big and square.

That is to say, it’s a big, heavy, expensive laptop. My brother works shifts in a remote location and from what I can tell, the 16 is great for that: you wouldn’t bring a desktop, but once the laptop comes out of the bag, it’s going to stay set up on the desk for the duration of the hitch. He tried leaving the GPU module at home, and found the AMD APU quite capable (he plays Tarkov and BF6, among others).

I support Framework’s vision and ethos and am willing to pay a premium for them. My sister uses my 11th gen Intel FW13 for school and is happy with it (only she wishes it was better for gaming), and the AMD 13 I bought was a massive upgrade in gaming capability and speed – I’m able to play Arc Raiders with my brother, one of the few online shooters who’s anti-cheat works on Linux.

Another big plus is that FWs play very well with Linux. The Wayland window manager Niri is amazing – so smooth and fast, now with alt-tab in the latest release. And I see there’s Dank Material Shell (1), which bundles things like a bar, launcher, and control center that one normally has to assemble piece by piece in WMs like Niri and Sway (which I used before).

1: https://github.com/AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell

Reminds me of the half-buried in the sands of time sculptures in Blade Runner 2049; the surrounding self-driving auto depot only adds to the resemblance to some far off future.

I was excited to see news about AMD beginning work on ACPI C4 in the Linux kernel (1) – my Framework loses about 10% a day in suspend, sometimes more, which is OK for me but of course I’d love for it to be better!

1: https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-ACPI-C4-Linux-Kernel-Code

I opened a-Shell(1) on my iPhone, typed `telnet issue3.anewsession.com`, and I was in! Probably my first time connecting to a telnet server.

The works in the issue aren’t static; from the help page:

> New Session's third issue emerges into a world where we’ve had to change parts of who we are to survive. […]

> Both you and this issue will change with each viewing. Select a story by pressing the key associated with it in the index. Read it again. Come back to it tomorrow. Is it the same? Are you?

1: https://github.com/holzschu/a-shell

Try running xwayland-satellite in another WM like Niri and see if it works there – for example, Gamescope didn’t work well on Sway, crashing as soon as Steam tried to spawn another window, but it’s working fine in Niri.

In practice, that's me as well; while here in the US texting is big, in years abroad I don't think I had a single conversation via SMS - everything was in apps.

That makes phones like the Punkt an ideal more than something practical. But I still want one. It appeals to the minimalist in me, big time.

Side note, Niri is a fantastic WM. When I saw the Phoronix article on HN talking about the addition of overview mode and more, I finally took the plunge and spent an afternoon converting over from Sway.¹ Anecdotally, I've seen less hangups on Niri around fullscreen games and floating windows, perhaps thanks to X11 running in xwayland-satellite.

1: the hardest part was finding a bar that supported i3status-rs; not a fan of GTK bars that eat up CPU. I settled on i3bar-river.

This is problem for me and my brother right now. He's up at a remote job site and we want to play Siege or Apex together¹, but both require anti-cheat and don't support Linux. And I'm loathe to devote space on my SSD to Windows.

¹: Rainbow Six: Siege and Apex Legends, respectively.

The fingerprint reader is one of the things I most love about my iPhone SE; I don’t see any reason to get a new phone.

Apple’s declining software quality and walled garden incline me more and more towards ditching iPhone for GrapheneOS or a dumb phone like the Punkt MP; I find far more joy reading on an eReader, taking photos with a camera, or taking notes in my notebook than I do using the phone for any of those.

Especially for notes, keeping journals for the last few years, I find such peace and even connection with myself and my thoughts in my journals; I write down passages from books that are meaningful to me, and seeing my own handwriting, the ink I wrote it in, even the shading in the ink – it all adds up to a deeply meaningful, physical experience.

The answer is not more phone, it’s less!

It’s a funny place to be where the color of the power button is news, though not a headline.

One of my local theatres does a discount Tuesday with $5 tickets. Over the years the price has crept up to $5.75, but it’s still an easier sell to friends and family. Of course if you buy online they add almost $2 to the price of a ticket… but that’s another rant.

The artist's impression in the original source on the 'fox infestation' (1) may provide a sense of scale.

1: https://www.londoncentric.media/p/why-lime-bikes-beep

Adding on to the photos in the article, here are the drones stacked and then staged in the warehouse pre-attack: https://t.me/RBC_ua_news/145230

The most telling or disturbing thing I learned from a recent article posted here about the Crypto-related kidnappings was how criminals found some of their victims’ addresses and personal information in marketing data that companies kept on their customers.

> forget everything you know about kheap separation, forget all the task port mitigations, forget SSV and SPTM

This is like when you’re speaking in a foreign language with a friend and getting along fine, but in the next sentence they begin describing brain surgery or nuclear physics, and your understanding falls off a cliff.

Or that time I tried to interpret a conversation about blast furnace renovations.

As far as jailbreaks go, I’m sad it’s not a thing anymore; I don’t think I ever did anything useful with my jailbroken iPad, but it was fun. Today I’d install a tethering app and UTM + a JIT solution (1).

1: SideStore looked promising, but my account was once a paid Apple Developer account and I have 10 app IDs that won’t expire, so I can’t install any apps like the aforementioned UTM, unless I make a new account or pay again.

From a 2022 study in Nature (1) where researchers grew limpet teeth:

"The proof-of-concept presented in this study can be scaled up using made-to-measure chitin sheets and synthetic substitutes for limpet cell-conditioned media. Given that chitin is currently a waste by-product of the fishing industry⁴⁴, our approach would allow its repurposing into a novel composite material that could substitute for many existing synthetic materials that are manufactured in a polluting or unsustainable manner, and could help solve environmental challenges such as the ocean plastics crisis. Furthermore, as chitin is itself biodegradable, this bioinspired composite meets the key modern engineering challenge of sustainability. In short, this new material has the potential to be manufactured and disposed of without generating harmful waste products."

1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31139-0

Sorry to pick apart your sentences, I wrote as if I was picking apart something computer generated, without a human in the loop.

This phrasing from the home page is odd:

> When I publish my next piece I will personally write you an email, with some of my thoughts on the post.

‘My next piece’? Maybe for a part of a book or a long article, but for a blog post?

The next oddity, ignoring ‘personally’, which is inappropriate for a mailing list, is ‘…with some of my thoughts on the post’; you’re going to send me a piece with some of your thoughts on the post?

I’d expect more accurate phrasing from a med student.

Edit: tone down the criticism, I wrote without much thought that some one made the site; my apologies if I came off as overly critical.

The Pixel 9a is really tempting for someone like me who’s tired of living in Apple’s walled garden (1), but wants a decent device at a fair price that’ll be supported for a good long time - the Pixel 9a ticks all of those boxes.

1: Why? File management and getting files into apps is the #1 area where Android wins.

For example, iOS has me copying or saving audiobooks into a folder only to import them into BookPlayer, whereas Android’s Smart Audiobook Player lets me copy my book to my audiobooks folder and hit ‘rescan’.

Funnily enough, one of the only music apps on iOS that offers the same functionality - copy a folder into your library and rescan - is the same Neutron Player I used to use on Android. The interface is clunky, but that’s a small price to pay.

Agree about the bulk; I’m on my second Framework 13 and when I pick up my brother’s 16 with graphics module I’m struck by the weight and size; indeed, he has had trouble fitting it into some small to mid-size backpacks.

Remembering the hours I spent going through KEXTs and bootloader config in ill-fated attempts to set up a Hackintosh fills me now with a kind of horror. Worst of all were the ACPI tables - SSDT and the like.

In contrast to that, running MacOS in a VM is heaven. Figuring out how to pass my iPhone through to Xcode took as long as the initial setup.

"fall[ing] in the rut of thought" reminds me of this paragraph from "The Footpath Way":

> So long as man does not bother about what he is or whence he came or whither he is going, the whole thing seems as simple as the verb "to be"; and you may say that the moment he does begin thinking about what he is (which is more than thinking that he is) and whence he came and whither he is going, he gets on to a lot of roads that lead nowhere, and that spread like the fingers of a hand or the sticks of a fan; so that if he pursues two or more of them he soon gets beyond his straddle, and if he pursues only one he gets farther and farther from the rest of all knowledge as he proceeds. You may say that and it will be true. But there is one kind of knowledge a man does get when he thinks about what he is, whence he came and whither he is going, which is this: that it is the only important question he can ask himself. (The Footpath Way, Introduction (1))

Even though the author is talking about a different kind of knowledge, the image of sticks of a fan - where going down one gradually excludes the others - stuck with me.

1: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59813

I did not know this about Kagi!

I abhor sites that translate into English based on my IP. In one case (a job site), I blocked the endpoint for their translation service and that was that.

This is one of the coolest, most inspiring projects I've seen anywhere - wow! Seeing you and nrp connect here in the comments was so cool; just the start, I'm sure.

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It was neat to read through the progress log (1), which begins,

> "It was around 1AM. I wrote up the mission goal (2) and went to sleep at 2AM. The start",

and ends:

> "With the YouTube video and blog post almost done, I hope this isn’t the last of anyon_e. But rather, the start of a trailblazing journey."

This project is the epitome of MUREX Electrical's mission statement, "attempt the impossible":

   It's "impossible", a non-MUREX Robotics Electrical member might say. However, we accept it as the process. In the end, we will have achieved something others might have called "impossible". But the achievement only comes through endless, motivated attempts at the impossible. (3)

1: https://www.byran.ee/progress

2: https://www.byran.ee/posts/mission, which links to (3)

3: https://github.com/murexrobotics/electrical?tab=readme-ov-fi...

A practical example of mapping streams:

    ffmpeg -i <movie-with-many-tracks.mkv> -map 0:0 -map 0:5 -map 0:12 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -scodec copy "output-movie.mkv"

Use: sometimes I have a file with a lot of audio and or subtitle streams but only want one or two of each – here, 0:0 is the video, 0:5 is English audio, and 0:12 was the subtitle track I wanted. Setting the codecs to “copy” means nothing gets reencoded.

I use a Lamy 2000 and find the shape, balance, and weight to be perfect.

Different inks can transform the writing experience; Aurora’s Black ink is very wet, and in my Lamy, writing with it is effortless.

I also enjoy writing with dip pens. The Sailor Hocoro (1) works with fountain- and dip-pen inks and has a smooth-writing steel nib. I use it when I want to write out some passage or quote in another color. India ink is the blackest black and I love it for that, while walnut ink is a pleasingly light sepia.

1: https://www.gouletpens.com/products/sailor-hocoro-dip-pen-se...

When I was learning Python on Udacity’s Python course, I worked out solutions to the problem sets on paper. That’s when I do my best, 100% focused thinking: with a good pen and a nice notebook.

It’s still the most enjoyable programming experience I’ve had.

The CSS for this site (root.css) is beautifully simple! The colors, spacing, and fonts are very comfy - this is exactly the look I'd want for my blog.

Kailh GM 8.0 (1) switches are supposed to be long-lasting. The switches in my Logitech mouse started to fail so I replaced them with the GM 8.0s - they are very clicky and still going strong.

If I was to order more, I'd go with softer switches - the GM 8.0 is a tad hard to click for games with repetitive clicking.

1: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256804334576149.html

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I destroyed my beloved Logitech trackball's PCB trying to desolder its switches, which had become unreliable, but for the mouse, saw someone on YouTube heat all three leads of the switch at once until they could lift it straight off the PCB - this was far easier than trying to clean the solder off each lead and made the process almost easy.