That never occurred to me, but sounds wonderful! I wonder if modern interfaces would have ended up more navigable if there had been the expectation of these dedicated keys on every keyboard?
In one of my friend groups (consisting of folks in their 20s-30s and including both university students and professionals, mostly in the US) I’ve noticed a cultish obsession with the idea that the “system” is stacked, success is due solely to luck or unfair advantage, there are very limited resources, etc. Alluding to these themes seems to be a significant part of group identity. People even talk about how they actively sabotage their employer’s strategic and tactical goals, and I observe them receiving supportive feedback on this from other folks.
From my perspective, I think that one of the difficulties of being young is not yet knowing what exactly you should be working hard at. And in the knowledge economy where many of us must make significant career changes every few years, kicking off that new trajectory is somewhat analogous to youth. If you are working hard at the wrong thing, it will certainly feel like everything is stacked against you. I see some of my friends doing just this- trying to become something that just isn’t a good fit for them. How do you provide mentorship for people to help them identify what’s the best area to apply their efforts to?
>> It seems like all of these eink devices are designed that way.
After going through 5 Kindles, I got a Kobo reader a few years ago, and couldn't be happier. It is more expensive than the Kindle because the price isn't subsidized, but the physical design is great, and I haven't broken it yet (I broke 4 Kindles through normal use).
They support loading your own software on without any "jailbreak", and I use Plato (https://github.com/baskerville/plato), which renders documents significantly faster than the stock reader.
Can you read Kindle books directly on the Kobo? I know I could use Calibre to rip/convert/sideload all my books, but that feels like such a pain. I did it that way first time around when I jailbroke my Kindle and it felt like I was spending more time faffing about with software than actually reading books.
The whole point of getting another eink device for me would be to just read without having it feel like my day job, so I'd hope everything was just click and go, a slick, Steam-like experience. That's the thing that has me worried about the Inkpalm - no Gapps without hacking it, which makes the Palma seem more appealing since at least it's just a normal Android with Gapps. I'd probably still put F-Droid on there because I prefer open source if the option is there, but I don't want to do any kind of messing around like rooting it or pairing it with a computer or setting up a new account to sync with some third-party service just to read books I already bought on Amazon.
You're right about the fragility of Kindles by the way, both of mine eventually got smashed, which is how I ended up doing all my reading on my phone with the Kindle app instead.
Switching away from kindle is going to require some initial amount of faffing about, no matter what. I feel your pain.
Once you've done the initial annoyances of deDRMing your kindle stuff, you can use the kobo account and store. I know that's another account which you understandably don't want.
I've never used a kindle but my kobo is amazing. I do use the store but I do deDRM my books on a computer before putting them on my reader, which is not necessary lol
I got a Kobo Libra Colour on its release and I also could not be happier. It is my first eink device so I've no experience with other devices. I was reading digitally on my phone prior. The kobo is pretty bomb proof and is repairable as well as being pretty open. I don't know what other readers look like IRL but the libra colour looks great. It apparently only uses the colour rendering when there is colour which would help? Idk, I love the thing. I've been taking notes on it, too, which has rendered my fountain pens rather neglected since I got it. It's the furthest I've ever gotten into digital note taking lol
If you had used another eInk device you could tell. I did pick up a Kobo Libra Color as well and while I like it there certainly is a noticeable grain and contrast loss compared to my B&W devices. It's just a little less sharp and requires more light to read from. For people just reading novels I think the color screen isn't totally worth it. The Libra Color does finally have a decent CPU compared to prior models so it is nicer on that front but I don't think it's worth it for everyone.
Curious, what was the failure mode on the broken kindles?
I have a Kindle Keyboard (k3w) and k4 both going strong (including decent battery life) after a decade of use and abuse by my kids and I.
The jailbreak on kindles that support it (don’t connect your new device to the internet until you have checked) is simple and painless - I prefer koreader to plato but they are both great and an embarrassment to the locked down systems these devices ship with.
Kobo is great but Amazon has better bang for buck (due to subsidy and access to the best eink screens first).
1st Kindle DX: Screen cracked, not sure why. Maybe thermal stress? Amazon replaced for free.
2nd Kindle DX: Stopped booting, no physical damage.
Kindle: Rolled on it after falling asleep, screen cracked.
Kindle Oasis: Dropped directly on its face, screen cracked. This weird anti-bezel obsession means there is nothing to protect the screen. But you need a bezel to hold onto, so not having a bezel makes the device worse in most ways.
The Kobo that I have has large plastic bezels, so it is easy to hold, lightweight, less likely to be dropped, and when dropped, unlikely to suffer direct impact to the glass surface.
I don't think you can legally sell a new small vehicle in the US, so the root cause is legislation that prevents this. I believe that if you could legally produce kei sized vehicles in the US, there would be a massive market for it, especially in urban environments. And I'm sure US manufacturers would be happy to sell them to all comers.
They are perfectly legal to sell. There's just little demand and most manufacturers have discontinued sales.
I own a not-quite-that small car and the manufacturer discontinued US sales for the same reason - the lack thereof. That's why the Smart Fortwo discontinued sales in the US in 2019. The US market for good or for bad just does not want small cars. Many manufacturers are even dropping their sedans for sales reasons; e.g., Ford dropped the Fusion and Focus.
I don't really agree anymore. These massive vehicles on the road means that suddenly everyone has developed a very real intuition for F=ma and they're all competing in a sort of arms race to survive car crashes. Wanna improve your odds of surviving? Get the biggest fucking thing you can.
This was actually my father's arguement when I turned 16. He hypothesized that I was a new driver and therefore more likely to be involved in a crash, but if I wanted to survive a crash I needed a larger vehicle than the other one involved in the collision.
I didn't much care either way, but I do still consider this when comparing new vehicles.
Yes. Typically. Unless you have some compelling reason to sacrifice, it's typically a safer bet to be alive having killed some other random driver than be dead. Especially when the perspective is a parent ensuring their genetic pool.
I thought it was just that you get hit with fines if your vehicle doesn't have a minimum mpg fuel efficiency and it's hard to make smaller trucks and SUVs with enough efficiency to avoid the fines
SUVs get a special carve-out, and the law mandates less fuel efficiency for them than for regular cars (or what used to be regular cars). Even wonder why station wagons fell out of favour in the US?
Yes, regulation in the US requires that vehicles be able to protect their occupants in pretty extreme crashes. Part of that requires a crumple zone, which means you can't fit many people inside a small car. For example, the Smart Fortwo is small, but only sits two people, while a kei vehicle of the same size would seat 4-5. I don't see much of a market for a 2-seater car.
And the inverse is also somewhat common- forms which require both a maternal and paternal surname, and won’t let you continue with just a single surname.
To continue on your point, the apprenticeship model of construction means that anyone can decide to get on the path to becoming an electrician today- starting on the lowest rung, but getting paid pretty well from day 0. In contrast to becoming a doctor… insane opportunity cost.
A lot of Japanese Kei cars fit that description, and they are available in every big market except the United States. I like to daydream about an alternative universe in which
Suzuki was still operating in the US.
I liked his podcast Lexicon Valley so much that I went back and listened through every episode. It’s had a large impact on my thinking about language and empathy for communication. I went from thinking there was a “right” way to use language, to understanding that it’s all about communication, and there are nearly endless patterns in which languages are structured.
Descriptivism vs prescriptivism are the two extremes of modern English linguistics. I've found most prescriptivists cite style guides that were written in a time and location when the dialects involved weren't as far from one another and social class signaling were considered important.
Today, English is global language with an astonishing amount of variation and learning to communicate in English is as important as learning to understand it in all its glorious forms. It places the burden back on the receiver to learn the local mode rather than an Imperial style self-assuming greatness seeking to subdue conquered peoples.
I’ll echo this sentiment. While it may take a while to figure out how to do something initially, the great thing about NixOS is that you only have to figure out how to do it exactly once. As far as my main desktop OS, I figured out a config that I liked several years ago, and haven’t really tweaked much since then. I ran the rolling release for a while, but I’ve moved back to the stable release, which is… well, stable.
