Fogus: Things and Stuff of 2024

(blog.fogus.me)

252 points | by janvdberg a day ago ago

43 comments

  • leetrout a day ago ago

    Some commentary about the radar...

    try: Boox Go 10.3 tablet

    Agree. Avoid reMarkable™. Hostile to the community and better options are out there or on the way including Boox, Onyx and the new Daylight Computer.

    https://daylightcomputer.com/product

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-note-taking-tablet/

    ---

    adopt: Blank Spaces app

    No need to pay money on ios. Clear off all the icons and when you need something swipe down in the middle of the screen and open search or swipe over to the alphabetical listing. Windows Phone was way ahead of its time on this one.

    ---

    assess: TypeScript – What does it buy me over JS?

    This one is a little bit flame bait... at the cost of a build step you get a much more reasonable development experience for JS targets with reliable types. The problem is smart people want to flex their brain a lot more than their restraint (where are my grug brains at?) and type astronauting makes the experience much worse. As with all things there is a balance however TS should be "Adopt".

    ---

    hold: Zig – This looks like a dead-end for me

    I keep looking at Zig and playing with it but I am so productive with Go and Python for things that need to be fast enough Zig doesn't have much that I need. However Mitchell Hashimoto is using it to great success for his new MacOS terminal emulator which makes me think I just haven't tried using it in the appropriate domain... maybe a raytracer is in my future.

    https://mitchellh.com/ghostty

    https://github.com/ghostty-org

    • MisterKent a day ago ago

      Remarkable seems to be a pretty hackable device? They give SSH ability and have stated they're not removing it. I think it's a very good balance of letting the community do weird things while they focus on their core product.

      I say this as someone who has not purchased one, but is considering it.

      • diggan a day ago ago

        > I say this as someone who has not purchased one, but is considering it.

        I used to be a reMarkable owner (until I lost it :( ) and I agree that the devices are very user-friendly in terms of hackability and ability to use it long after the company itself is gone. Getting SSH access by flicking a toggle in the settings sounds like the opposite of "hostile to the community".

        • leetrout a day ago ago

          A token of goodwill for compliance with GPL. If they actually cared about the community they would share the spec for Xochitl docs and such. Instead some blessed few in the discord know people at the company and get some info through back channels for the UI bits and the rest is cobbled together reverse engineering. Some people seem fine with that but coupled with their robo-law firm sending C&D takedowns to community sites where people share content they have created for reMarkable™ tablets and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Glad others have had better experiences.

          • cooperadymas 21 hours ago ago

            Are you sure you aren't confusing Remarkable with something else? I have never heard of them sending C&D letters, nonetheless to community sites.

            Searching for this I could find only a single example from 4 years ago where they sent a C&D to remarkable-explorer.com. Aside from the copyright issues, this site seemed to be using non-public APIs and asking the user to enter authorization tokens directly on it. I don't have all the facts but I'm not surprised this would be problematic.

    • philips 21 hours ago ago

      I really like my Supernote A5X. I can use the whole thing offline. And I built an obsidian plugin https://github.com/philips/supernote-obsidian-plugin?tab=rea...

      • diggan 3 hours ago ago

        I tried to search but did find anything so asking here instead... Do you get SSH access like on the reMarkable on any of the Supernote things? They share a bunch of pictures and information about how the hardware is replacable and such, but I couldn't find any projects of people hacking on the firmware and software like there is in the reMarkable ecosystem. Otherwise it does look like a very interesting alternative.

      • JadeNB 17 hours ago ago

        > I really like my Supernote A5X. I can use the whole thing offline.

        They even finally released the A5 X2!

    • 8n4vidtmkvmk a day ago ago

      I was trying zig yesterday. There seems to be a bunch of churn in build.zig; changed APIs. ChatGPT wasn't able to help. Rocky start but I did eventually get GLFW running, and the c-interop seems good. Also got some freezing in my IDE maybe from ZLS. So it still seems a bit rough at the moment but I'm still optimistic about it for things like game dev and compiling to wasm.

    • dimitar 21 hours ago ago

      I have a Boox Note Air 4C so here is the good:

      * I can comfortably read any PDF; I don't think the font is too tiny. This is the main reason I bought it for.

      * Android means great data support, I can open any format and I can even install the kindle app and read the books I purchased there.

      * Using the pen seems nice enough, I started doing some annotations although I didn't buy this device for that.

      * Nice way to sort of "airdrop" files from devices on the same network

      The bad:

      * I am a bit unhappy with the battery life; I hope I will tune it at some point.

      * the screen is a little dark, so the "frontlight" needs to be on more often than a black and white e-ink device

      The weird:

      * the built-in AI assistant is trained in the PRC and has quite interesting opinions on current events and recent history.

    • cooperadymas a day ago ago

      > Avoid reMarkable™. Hostile to the community

      As a long time member of the so-called "community" I have never once felt hostility from the company. Quite the opposite in fact.

      > > assess: TypeScript – What does it buy me over JS?

      > This one is a little bit flame bait

      This is disingenuous and entirely unfair. The author very clearly indicated they wanted to assess whether it is beneficial for their own individual purposes. There was no intent to generalize and purport upon its general utility.

      • bobnamob a day ago ago

        Furthermore, the author mentions ClojureScript earlier in the piece.

        I've not done much frontend work, but I'm not sure ClojureScript aficionados would generally feel that TS has much benefit over JS when CLJS is in the picture as well. Salt your JS to your own taste imo

      • leetrout 15 hours ago ago

        Replied to a sibling but in addition to the notice I got from their robo lawyer here's a thread of others showing the etsy listings getting yoinked and the facebook groups getting shutdown.

        https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1evdt9p/c...

        • Arainach 11 hours ago ago

          Etsy listings and commercial sellings aren't a "community site"

          • leetrout 2 hours ago ago

            Figma community posts, facebook groups and others. Its in the comments and other posts in the sub. I am honestly surprised the sub has survived.

    • wonger_ a day ago ago

      Ghostty is cross-platform, but it feels extra nice on macOS. https://gpanders.com/blog/ghostty-is-native-so-what/

    • divan a day ago ago

      Boox also has 13" tablet, which is amazing for reading A4 papers and can be used to work outside under direct sunlight (I use ssh+mosh+tailscale and bluetooth keyboard).

    • fud101 13 hours ago ago

      I won't use TS again. I'll wait til JS gets a better types story and adopt that. Build step is a deal breaker imho.

    • 6 hours ago ago
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  • voidUpdate a day ago ago

    This is the second time I've seen the Alexander the OK video about Elite referenced here in two workdays. I love that channel so much, he does excellent dives into the history of more obscure vintage computers, such as the D-17B Minuteman guidance computer and the CK37 used in the Viggen jet

  • jwhitlark a day ago ago

    Nerd sniped on the first entry. The first sentence of the first entry. The first minute of the video in the first sentence. The first comment in the video, etc.

    If anyone was going to manage recursive, fractal, nerd sniping, it would be fogus, of course.

  • gandalfgeek a day ago ago

    Love Fogus, but zero mention of how LLMs impacted programming in 2024?

    • fogus a day ago ago

      LLMs have had very little influence on my programming so far.

      • projectileboy 19 hours ago ago

        I’d be surprised if they had, working on what you work on! I’ll bet you would find them interesting in other ways, though. I’ve had a ton of success using them as study guides in other areas (e.g., biology).

      • xpe 17 hours ago ago

        I predict this is likely to change in 2025, if you explore with them -- unless there are constraints that make using them impractical (security or policy or bureaucracy being the ones that come to mind). I've experimented continuously with LLMs for over a year as a solo developer. For example, I have been using a workflow where I write a design document and often work alongside the LLM to keep the code and document in-sync.

        P.S. I used to do a lot of Clojure, and definitely appreciate your work on it!

    • bachmeier a day ago ago

      It may not have been important or interesting to him, or maybe he just figured the 10-digit number of articles written on the topic in 2024 (most by LLMs) was enough.

  • zem a day ago ago

    the linked article on combinatory programming is lovely

    • crux 2 hours ago ago

      Thank you - I wrote that!

      Happy to discuss further if anyone has any thoughts.

  • hubraumhugo a day ago ago

    Any good alternatives for "adopt: Blank Spaces app" on Android?

    • thcipriani 16 hours ago ago

      Unlauncher[0] looks close (to me, someone who has never used Blank Spaces).

      [0]: <https://jkuester.github.io/unlauncher/>

    • mamoul a day ago ago
      • JadeNB 17 hours ago ago

        Why would a launcher need to share my location with third parties?

        • dpatterbee 9 hours ago ago

          Built in weather widget

          • JadeNB 37 minutes ago ago

            > Built in weather widget

            Thanks. I figured, but boy, does this annoy me. Google, for example, refuses to show me the weather without location permission. I am perfectly capable of telling it where I want to see the weather, but it will not allow me to see any weather without a location permission. (Usually I think Samsung screws up their design decisions relative to Google, but they do get this one right.)

            Similarly, a launcher does not need to share my location with a third party to request weather. It can simply request weather in, say, a ZIP code, and then, if it must, refine the results it presents to me based on my location.

  • datpiff a day ago ago

    The History of Wordstar is there for the second year in a row :)

  • tonymet 21 hours ago ago

    I esteem & enjoy Requiem for a Dream, but I couldn't bear watching it again, despite a dozen tries. By that measure it's the best horror movie of all time.

  • 3 hours ago ago
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  • AnnaEloise201 a day ago ago

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  • AnnaEloise201 a day ago ago

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