Fogus: Things and Stuff of 2024
blog.fogus.meSome 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/
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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.
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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".
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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.
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.
> 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".
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.
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.
Here's more evidence https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1evdt9p/c...
Etsy shops are a “community site”?
They update on that reddit makes it sound resolved?
I heard boox was very not gpl comiant too
I received one so yes i am quite sure.
Would have been a good disclosure to include from the get go.
Very curious to see this; can you post a PII-redacted copy or paste?
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.
> * 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
This is why I ultimately decided to go for a Boox Note Air 3 (sad they discontinued the B&W line). Apart from the lack of support for Boox firmware version 4, all the upsides apply without any of the downsides.
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...
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.
> I really like my Supernote A5X. I can use the whole thing offline.
They even finally released the A5 X2!
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.
Zig — here's the choice matrix:
- You need strong performance, your choices are:
- You need to export to C code (all of the above have options to import from C code with C/C++/Zig being the easy choices)* C: nope, unless it's super simple library-type code, must integrate as easily as possible with everything C compatible * C++: unless you have ecosystem lock-in, avoid this mess, stuck in an evolutionary rut where they can't undo bad decisions and keep adding more complexity (mostly good stuff, but total complexity too high) * Zig: better than C & fully compatible with it * Rust: ecosystem tailwinds, bit better safety than Zig, steeper learning curve and uglier code * Go: ok but GC probably means not the best perf * Java: JIT means it can handily beat non-painstakingly hand-optimized C code in some particular cases (requires a lot of wisdom to choose this for perf) * something that will incur a lot of pain in some other way like Fortran, Forth or Ada
All in all, for new system or high-perf work with no ecosystem tie in, it's probably a battle between Rust and Zig. I think I'd use Zig on aesthetic grounds — find it less painful to use than Rust, and I'm not too worried about missing on the extra safety. The converse decisions seems reasonable too.* C: ez * Zig/C++: harder but still ez, need to write some wrappers when using features nont in CGhostty is cross-platform, but it feels extra nice on macOS. https://gpanders.com/blog/ghostty-is-native-so-what/
> 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.
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
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...
Etsy listings and commercial sellings aren't a "community site"
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.
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.
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).
You are talking about the Boox Tab X? How is the battery life?
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
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.
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.
Love Fogus, but zero mention of how LLMs impacted programming in 2024?
LLMs have had very little influence on my programming so far.
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).
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!
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.
the linked article on combinatory programming is lovely
Thank you - I wrote that!
Happy to discuss further if anyone has any thoughts.
Any good alternatives for "adopt: Blank Spaces app" on Android?
Unlauncher[0] looks close (to me, someone who has never used Blank Spaces).
Check Niagara Launcher: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bitpit.launche...
Why would a launcher need to share my location with third parties?
Built in weather widget
> 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, it seems to me, 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. (Or, better, there must be some way for it to delegate weather requests to a weather app of my choice, and let the weather app figure out my location through whatever mechanism I have already approved for that app.)
The History of Wordstar is there for the second year in a row :)