Readit Newsmatthiaswh commented on Show HN: Jelly – A simpler shared inbox for small teams letsjelly.com/... · Posted by u/mlettini
A little easter egg for the eagle-eyed ;-)
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
It's funny how this newfangled "local first" thing is what us old fogies used to call just "applications."
I get that there is networking and integration that a modern application will typically need to do (depending on its core purpose), and syncing state to and from servers is a special concern (especially if conflict management is necessary) that native desktop applications rarely had to do in years past.
But at the end of the day, it sure does feel like we've come full circle. For a long time, every single application was "local first" by default. And now we're writing research papers and doing side POCs (I'm speaking generally, nothing to do with the author or their article) trying to figure out how to implement these things.
I feel this way at times too, but the ability to sync state really is key. Traditional native desktop apps rarely had to consider this because users would only ever interact on one device. Now users are moving between a computer and a phone, if not more devices.
If I were to frame it succinctly I would say applications = local-only which is distinct from local-first.
> Disclaimer: I self installed one for my house (13kWth) and I'm very glad I did
My HVAC guy keeps telling me to install a couple of heat pumps (he doesn't like driving out to me), solar panels, and an in-house battery; what sort of complexity was this job? Are there online sources you used?
Installing heat pumps doesn't require a ton of domain knowledge (assuming you're already a handy person), but it's a lot of work. It took 3 guys who do it for a living 160+ man hours to install our mini-splits. They had to drill through walls, attach channels to the siding, crawl into a tight crawlspace, do some plumbing when they hit a water pipe with their drill, wire up electrical, and add breakers to the panel.
The only thing that might catch you up is designing the system and ensuring you right size it for your heat load requirements. I'm sure you could research this pretty well, but your HVAC guy might also be happy to consult on that portion.
That's a lot of lines going to the outdoor unit.
Is there two per indoor head?
It looks like that unit may have 3 indoor heads. Two lines per head. Power to each head. Power to the outdoor unit.
If you're interested in installing heat pumps, there is a similar open data initiative started by some redditors to aggregate heat pump pricing quotes.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hBebytdBOzLQ4eoAbdFQ...
matthiaswh commented on Neal Stephenson was prescient about our AI age theatlantic.com/technolog... · Posted by u/Rant423
I'll probably get roasted for this, but-
After reading all the love here for Stephenson here for years, I went and bought a few books (snow crash, diamond age, etc), intending to power through them. I am a pretty avid reader when I am in the mood and enjoy fiction including sci-fi, fantasy, *punk, etc. I couldn't get through Snow Crash. It didn't feel like a finished book to me. If I remember correctly it seemed like things like river names had placeholders and even saw some errors in the text. What am I missing?
Similarly, I wanted to love Stephenson. I even enjoy the intense technical details in a good sci-fi story (I'm talking to you Red Mars).
I started with Seveneves and could not finish it. After 20 pages I wanted to quit, but I stuck it out for another 150 pages before folding. The premise of the story was fantastic, but the writing was not enjoyable to me, and IMO, not very good.
Where Robinson and authors like Weir and Clarke weave the technical details into the story in a fascinating way and show understanding of the topic, I felt Stephenson was copy-pasting Wikipedia articles into the middle of a book. Furthermore, he treated the reader like an idiot - by the end I couldn't help but laugh painfully when he felt the need to explain to us for the 30th time that A+0.150 means 0 years and 150 days after the agent event.
His characters are vague and annoying. While Robinson's characters were similarly lacking in depth in Red Mars, at least they represented something bigger, were deliberately chosen, and served a storytelling purpose.
Here's an example I pulled out of Seveneves that made me cringe.
"In those days Izzy had been like a kite: all surface area, no mass. Once Amalthea (a comet) had been attached, it was like a kite with a big rock strapped to it."
Weir would have pulled that line off easily as a slightly sarcastic, self-aware remark. I didn't get the impression that Stephenson meant it anything other than a serious statement.
I've always liked PHP. You wouldn't pick it for your job interview's coding test if you had a choice (Python all the way there), but it's so intertwined with the internet and what we've learned about programming over the years. First mover advantage kind of deal.
And I've never had to deal with ESM/CJS/AMD whatever module nonsense with PHP. No transpiling anything, just edit and refresh. And so many useful functions out of the box (array_column anyone?).
I think its bad rap comes from its ubiquity. Pretty much any existing website I've had to work on has been a putrid mess. That's just the way codebases go unless you're a SaaS with a CTO who's hell bent on preventing that.
And since most of these putrid messes have been based on PHP, due to it's age and ubiquity, people blame it, due to observation bias.
PHP is akin to, I don't know, the Subway (fast food restaurant chain) of programming languages?
You don't hear too much about it. You almost never notice it unless you're actually looking for it, unlike McDonald's with its ostentatious golden arches.
It's popularity is waning. But it's still everywhere. [0] There are a hundred other sandwich chains that have tried to do it better but none have managed the ubiquity of Subway.
People like to look down on it and espouse the alternatives, but when it comes down to it fast food can only ever be so good.
I guess that means that JavaScript is McDonald's?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_fast_food_...
Now you know someone.
P.S. The drift usually happens when you hold the nub in a particular direction for too long, or on occasion if the screen is pressing on it when closed. It's irritating, but can often be addressed (although some models are worse than others).