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digikazi

311 karma · joined January 31, 2016

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digikazi··on Googlebook: The laptop your Android phone has been waiting for
I'd love to get my hands on one, just to see what its like. Although at this price level I might as well go Apple. The walled garden isn't quite as bad as I once thought - or maybe that's just my age showing :)
digikazi··on Googlebook: The laptop your Android phone has been waiting for
I could - and I did in fact, get behind the idea of the Chromebook.

A simple OS for the masses (who don't need more than a browser), cheap, easy to replace and useful. As an aside, it played nice with my Android phone.

Due to its reasonable entry price I build an ecosystem for well under £1000. I guess this resonated with my philosophy: technology should be cheap, accessible and easy to use, with a low barrier for entry. My computing life at work is complicated so I enjoyed having a simple set up at home (although I still keep a Windows gaming rig).

Sure, the Chromebook was plagued by all the usual Google problems like lack of focus and so on. Google dipped in and out: they might release a Pixelbook, maybe even two and then nothing or maybe a Pixelbook a few years later but actually guys we'll give up oh wait here's a...um...Googlebook.

I fail to see the attraction of this device. When the price of a decent Chromebook approaches (and sometimes surpasses) that of a Macbook NEO (or even a decent second hand Macbook), what is the point of buying this device? At this price point I might as well go all in on Apple, since I know that at least they'll be consistent and good.

It was the same story with the Nexus and Pixel lines. Good mid range stuff initially, but ultimately sabotaged by premium prices that are not backed-up by solid hardware. Its a shame really.

digikazi··on Spain orders blocks on Archive.today and its mirrors
It is not happening now.

But sadly they are building the perfect infrastructure to support a genuinely totalitarian state. If, in a future election somebody gets elected who wants to put this structures to use, I guess then we'll be in trouble!

digikazi··on 1,300 Beautiful Wildlife Illustrations from the 19th Century Now Restored
I'm assuming it is quite nice, but terrible adverts popping up all over the place and distracting from the overall experience, so I only skimmed through it before I closed the window (on a work computer hence no adblock!)

Here's something similar from The Guardian, but without the ads:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/18/natural-...

digikazi··on MacBook Neo
My last tablet was a Nexus 7, so I wouldn’t know ;)

But on a more serious note yes, I agree with you. Tablets - absolutely great for the use cases you mentioned, for everything else I want a proper keyboard, etc.

digikazi··on MacBook Neo
Maybe. When a decent Chromebook is £697 (https://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-chromebook-14m9610-laptop-m...) it doesn't make economic sense to get one.
digikazi··on MacBook Neo
I wonder if Apple is positioning these to counter Google's Chromebooks? The pricing makes sense, especially as lately I've seen some pretty expensive Chrome devices: £500 - £700... which is not that far off from base Macbook Air, but without the quirky limitations.

As an aside, I have been a firm ChromeOS user since 2013; since my computing life at work is pretty complicated, so I wanted to keep it really simple at home. For the most part, this setup worked just fine.

However, lately... I've found the Pixel line to be very underwhelming and expensive - add to that the ever increasing cost of Chromebooks... What can I say? Moving over to the Great Walled Garden of Apple makes sense. I'll probably buy one of these.

digikazi··on What podcasts are you listening to?
Currently working my way through Melvyn Bragg's back catalogue of In Our Time. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player

Also from the BBC, the 13 Minutes series (?): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xttx2

...and The Fall of Civilisations: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fall-of-civilizations-...

...ocasionally a smattering of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.

Really curious to see what other people are listening to.

I'm trying to be a bit more "intentional" with my podcasts, especially as its easy to amass a huge list of stuff and then not listen to 95% of them.

Edit: grammar

digikazi··on A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
I have no idea why you’re being downvoted, since what you say is objectively true.
digikazi··on uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari
Bizarrely when I do that it tells me “uBO Lite is not supported by this version of Safari”.

On an iPhone 13 with the latest version of iOS.

I’m very new to the Apple ecosystem so it could well be that it’s meant to work on a laptop/desktop rather than the mobile version.

I could of course be wrong: does anybody know better? Or is it a case of me being frazzled after work?

EDIT: some users have suggested upgrading to iOS 18.6 solves this problem. Doing it as we speak!

digikazi··on Creating a static website for all my bookmarks
That's genuinely awesome! I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time!

I don't have a background in coding, rather I'm just a humble engineering tech but this sounds like something I want to learn and sink my teeth into.

I have a tremendous amount of links - probably going back to the late 2000's and I've always relied on services like Pinboard, Raindrop and Delicious (!).

Once again thank you for the inspiration and the metaphorical kick up the backside!

digikazi··on Man who lost $800M Bitcoin in landfill wants to buy the garbage dump
This was talked about on here just last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42999044
digikazi··on All Kindles can now be jailbroken
Sadly Libgen seems to have been down for the past couple of months, there is some discussion whether it will ever come back or not.
digikazi··on Man who lost Bitcoin fortune in Welsh tip explores purchase of entire landfill
That exactly what I was going to say: what makes him think that a HDD bought in 2013 and buried in a landfill site since then will work when its plugged in?

Personally I have my doubts - as per Nursie: It's gone mate.

digikazi··on Google Fit APIs get shut down in 2025, might break fitness devices
In my case, out of nostalgia for the Google of old. I paid for a Pixel phone and was very unimpressed with the experience, so much so that after a lifetime on Android I went and bought a brand new iDevice. Oddly enough I found Google Fit to be a nice app to use, fairly straightforward and without too much crud. Oh well, off to the Goog Graveyard it goes!
digikazi··on Three chips in and Google Tensor is on life support
That was my experience as well. Generally speaking the Pixel 7a is a competent phone with one (big) flaw. The battery life is truly terrible, and the charging speeds are glacial. I was honestly expecting more, especially as its advertised as Google's best. The forums are full of people complaining about it and the responses are almost the same: Turn off 5G!! Turn off wifi scanning! Turn off bluetooth scanning too! Dial down the screen refresh rate!

Returned the phone and got an iPhone 13 instead; and as painful as it was switching to iOS after 13 years of Android, I don't regret my decision. The iDevice comes with its own niggles, but at least I don't have to worry about battery life (yet). Maybe google will figure it out by the time the Pixel 8a comes out.

digikazi··on Archive of medieval books and manuscripts discovered in Romanian church
I do as well, which is why when I went to Athens for two weeks last September, I very much looked forward to lots of smoky old orthodox churches. Alas, it wasn't to be: the vast majority of churches I saw looked brand new and as if they had been designed by MacDonald's. Clearly the church has money - and the imagination/vision of petty shopkeepers.
digikazi··on Is Cheese Good for You?
That's very true. Luckily I am not, and so I can enjoy cheese in all its forms.

As to whether it's "good for you" or not... I suspect moderation is the key word here.

digikazi··on Nowhere to hide: How a nuclear war would kill you–and almost everyone else
NATO was quite happy to bomb Serbia and Libya, to name but two.
digikazi··on Nowhere to hide: How a nuclear war would kill you–and almost everyone else
As somebody who has lived in that neck of the woods, I would want nuclear weapons and war in general to stay very, very far from my shores.

Equally I would want the current combatants to take a step back and have a grown up discussion about NATO expansion, security guarantees, ending the bloodshed - you know the boring nitty gritty stuff. I'm not dumb enough to cheer on a nuclear strike, regardless of who launched it.

digikazi··on Is Cheese Good for You?
Yes.
digikazi··on Socialist Romania Computer Chips
...having a bath with water warmed on the stove in huge pans. Equally good memories :)
digikazi··on Socialist Romania Computer Chips
The hot water was "scheduled" - usually twice a day. I don't remember that well as I was quite young at the time, but I think I was meant to be on for a couple of hours in the morning and another couple of hours in the evening. In reality however, the hot water was never more than lukewarm at best and the schedule itself was very flexible: I remember whole weeks without hot water.
digikazi··on Why I'm in the Army Reserve – an explainer for my friends in tech
Technically you don't need a degree to be an officer in the UK: you only need A Levels (finish high school) to go to Sandhurst and begin officer training. In reality however something like 98% of Sandhurst applicants are university graduates. I don't know the exact percentage of entrants who don't have a degree though, so don't quote me. It has been a while.

P.s. as a famous example, I believe Prince Harry went to Sandhurst without going to university first.

digikazi··on Poll: Where do you live?
UK: England
digikazi··on The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components
Your experience sounds similar to ours. We're an engineering company in the UK; in better days we paid £3,000 for 1,000 chips. Today we paid £58,000 for the same amount.
digikazi··on The Schindler of Japan, Chihune Sugihara
(To quote Speer: "I didn't know, I could have known, I should have known." He's been vilified but I haven't seen anything to paint him as a liar as far as this is concerned.)

Read Gitta Sereny's "Albert Speer, his battle with the truth". It's a thick book, but fascinating. She casts serious doubt on Speer's assertion that he didn't know about the death camps, or that Jews were systematically being exterminated.

digikazi··on The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part I: Beginnings and Legends
Exactly! I have enough of tech at work - in my down time I don't want to read about more tech, I want to read stuff that's engaging, interesting, unusual and thought-provoking. In this respect HN doesn't disappoint. I also come here for the discussions: they too are frequently interesting and more often than not I learn something new. Long may it last.
digikazi··on Footage of Israeli defenses vs. rockets around Tel Aviv [video]
Fair point
digikazi··on Footage of Israeli defenses vs. rockets around Tel Aviv [video]
A noble sentiment but I found that nothing polarises opinion quite as much as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Technology aside, it's a terribly sad situation with no easy solution in sight.

...and to play devil's advocate: if I'd chose a place to have a "political" discussion, I guess HN would be the place, since the level of debate is a cut above the rest, and the comments often well informed and eloquent.

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