darrmit

This. I still struggle a bit with compulsively checking Slack or email during the workday, and sometimes I take extended breaks from HN just to avoid the time suck (among other things) but this + quitting social media entirely 2 years ago means I got my attention span back.

SimpleNote has always been the standard to me for what note taking needs to be, but the lack of encryption makes it a non-starter for me. StandardNotes comes close.

Had the exact same thought. It’s like reading a foreign language – and I’m going to be honest – not load bearing at all.

I came here to say this. I had abandoned smartwatches entirely and gone back to mechanical watches because smartwatches just did too much and the small utility I got from them (i.e. health) came with the tradeoff that they had to be charged every couple of days. I ended up trying the Garmin Instinct and it has been exactly what I was looking for. I turn off all notifications and just use it for the data it gives me and for the fitness tracking.

This is horrible and a big reason why I refuse to go “all in” on Apple, Google, or Microsoft (among other reasons). Apple is the one I’m closest to given my hardware, though.

Given how invested you are in the Apple ecosystem I can’t fathom why you would go get an Apple Gift Card from a store to do this kind of transaction, though. It wouldn’t even cross my mind to do it that way.

I have been experimenting with Immich off and on for over a year, first in docker-compose and now in podman. It is slick and seamless in a lot of ways, but the portability and upgrade ability are questionable, as others have highlighted.

For example, when they moved between Postgres container versions, it required a manual edit to the compose file to adjust the image. Even if you managed to get it set up initially in docker, it’s these sorts of concepts that are way more advanced than the vast majority of people who may even be interested in self-hosting.

For a hobbyist self-hoster it’s cool and fun, but not something at this point I’d trust my photos to alone. I have considered Ente for that but today it’s still iCloud Photos.

I would absolutely call it good given the volume of comments that flow through here. Not sure what other communities you’re referring to, but my experience over decades of forums and social media is that HN consistently somehow avoids the toxic fate of so many other sites and services like it.

You lost me at “the left”.

I’ve been in rather intense therapy for several years due to a hyper religious upbringing and a narcissistic mother. Recently I’ve used AI to help summarize and synthesize thoughts and therapy notes. I see it as being a helpful assistant in the same way Gemini recording meeting notes and summarizing is, but it is entirely incapable of understanding the nuance and context of human relationships, and super easy to manipulate in to giving you the responses you want. Want to prove mom’s a narcissist? Just tell it she has a narcissistic history. Want to paint her as a good person? Just don’t provide it context about her past.

I can definitely see how those who understand less about the nature of LLMs would be easily misled into delusions. It’s a real problem. Makes one wonder if these tools shouldn’t be free until there are better safeguards. Just charging a monthly fee would be a significant enough barrier to exclude many of those who might be more prone to delusions. Not because they’re less intelligent, but just because of the typical “SaaS should be free” mindset that is common.

Fool me twice, can't put the blame on you..

Immutable distros today feel like someone read a CNCF "best of" publication and decided to throw it at desktop Linux to see what sticks. Not everyone wants to be a DevOps engineer.

I think the concept has promise (see: ChromeOS) but the execution today is still way too rough.

I've tried so many things like this over the years and considered Configurator, but my only Apple computer at this point is a corporate Mac that blocks USB access to my phone. It's a great idea, and I'm glad to see it documented.

That said, the biggest shift I encountered in my own phone usage was when I got an Aro box [1]. It's expensive (I got one refurbished), but pretty, and functional, and it has made a HUGE difference in my phone habits. I no longer keep my phone in my bedroom and when I catch myself ignoring those around me in favor of my phone, I can hard cut that off by putting it in the box.

I like the idea of simplifying your phone with software tweaks like this, but I have found the physical separation to be the most freeing, and encourage that if you're interested in freeing yourself from the screen.

[1] https://www.goaro.com/for-families

I have never input anything into one of these tools that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with them using for training or any other reason. I just assumed it was happening.

It's so funny you mention that because I picked up the Daily Stoic a couple of years ago and have read it off and on. I have found it really enjoyable. Thanks for the rec!

I do agree point #2 is possible, but is that not something that could be accounted for and tuned in the model to an extent? I believe a tuned LLM would be able to distinguish between interpretation and generation of scripture, but I may be wrong.

I mean I found great relief from high-demand Evangelicalism via giving up on my belief and seeking intense therapy from the traumas I experienced. However, as both I, my wife, and our kids age, we feel a need for some framework to live by, to some extent.

The friction for me is I am just a very logical and evidence-driven person by nature, so while I recognize (at least for me) that there are some benefits to adhering to some religion or spirituality, the core Christian belief is really difficult for me and always has been. So I don't really know yet where I'll land.

As someone who was raised extremely religious, strayed to the polar opposite, and is now trying to find my way in between the two, I do find this interesting. While the understanding of LLMs and when/how to apply them makes sense, I would argue that they fit right alongside human interpretation of scripture. Consider that many pastors "teaching" scriptures aren't even formally educated.

Arguing that you can't use an LLM for Christian apologetics because it "might not be true" overemphasizes the definition of "truth" when it comes to scripture and those teaching Christian apologetics, which is entirely influenced by what doctrine you subscribe to.

I've been using Firefox for years personally and I love it. But it's cumbersome to try to use it for work, at least in a separate browser instance a la Chrome Profiles or Safari profiles. I wish they'd make that easier.

This is reminiscent of my own experience with Linux, but I didn't go the developer route and instead ended up in product management via sysadmin and consulting. Through the years, the thousands of hours I spent experimenting with Linux in ~2004-2008 as a teenager has stuck with me. I fondly remember printing the Gentoo install guide out and installing it offline because I had some early Linksys wireless adapter that was super flaky.

Also upvoting, as this is a valuable lesson as you head into a career: no company (nor school) cares about you more than they care about the organization. HR does not work for you and while the individuals may care for you personally, they will almost never act in "good faith".

I did the same and will likely end up back with Instapaper. Omnivore’s export leaves a lot to be desired, though. Trying to find a script that will give me something usable to import.

Ugh this is the only read-it-later service I ever found that "stuck". It was so simple and good. This sucks.

I did pay briefly for Kagi, but ultimately just didn't see the benefit over DDG. Google seems to be too far gone to be useful, but DDG still consistently finds what I need. Other than that, the main issue I have with Kagi from a business perspective is it will always be extremely niche. Even among "tech" people, the idea of paying for a search engine will always be a single digit percentage of the overall market.

I view Fastmail in a similar manner, but the difference with them is they have a real business market for those wanting an alternative to Google or Microsoft.

I gave up at "You give up human readable files". While I recognize in some cases these recommendations may make sense/CSV may not be ideal, the idea of a CSV _export_ is generally that it could need to be reviewed by a human.

The religious "trust" scale would likely look largely the same. While "deeply religious" may have been the reality for the US at one point, I think it would be hard to argue that with each generation we don't move a little further away from that. As someone who was previously "deeply religious" and am now "non-religious", I still wrestle with whether that's a good thing or not.

I did this back in 2012 after using Android and iPhone for the previous 4-5 years and despite really finding it a good experience, even then it was becoming difficult to live without maps and a camera. I've been thinking about it again, though, and the one thing I've tried to find is a decent keyboard phone for texting. I don't mind going without a browser, etc. on my phone, but I do find communication via text to be valuable and I don't want to go back to T9 or a phone keypad to try to do it.

Agreed. Miniflux is rock solid and I use Reeder on my iOS devices, which actually is gorgeous and looks native on iOS. Have used NetNewsWire as well.

I've found restic + rclone to be extremely stable and reliable for this same sort of differential backup. I backup to Backblaze B2 and have also used Google Drive with success, even for 1TB+ of data.

Sarah and Duck is a great show. We watched it all the time when my 11 year old was 5-6 and my now 5 year old has grown to love it as well. Agreed on the description - the instrumental music is relaxing and the mix between realism and complete fantasy (like when they go underwater or inside the ball machine) is a lot of fun.

> All of these practices feel fairly benign

So let's say you're running a Linux distro and you install a browser. That browser then overwrites files elsewhere on the system making it nearly impossible to eradicate.

That's benign? Sounds more like a cancer to me.

Though, I do agree that Microsoft has steadily returned to being somehow even more gross post Windows 7. I've refused to upgrade to Windows 11 on my gaming PC. Never thought I'd be one of those people, but Microsoft's overall trend of gathering data and peddling their own sub-part solutions with blatant disregard for users is just not something I can support.

If it gets to a point where Windows 10 no longer supports the games I want to run, I'll revisit then whether they've come to their senses, but all of the recent news seems to indicate that won't be the case, so chances are I'll just give up on PC gaming entirely.