Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 891 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#151

Post by Grue3 »

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them.

Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now abandoned, despite being superior to everything else that exists.

Forte Agent (free version) - great text Usenet reader, now abandonware.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#152

Post by martinml »

hoof_marks wrote: post #101

Windows XP and its search feature- Win7 above does not have it. Yahoo Geocities- simply miss it. and also Yahoo in general. My current yahoo mail is chock a block with spam mails. plus their ads. Xerox Ventura desktop publishing software- that was cool when book publishing was required. Motorola T90/91 basic mobile phone. superb and handiest phone used. Current Moto is smart but not unbeatable. Most importantly old B…

I miss the search feature in Windows XP too. But Agent Ransack is a very good replacement and it even integrates with the file explorer. Try it!

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#153

Post by shade23 »

This[1].It was one of the best chrome store extensions which would directly take you to the relevant text while using Google Search.But it was shut down because of the drain in advertising revenue. Thank you Google!

[1]:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quick-scroll/gkcfk...

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#155

Post by kome »

frik wrote: post #46

Please read it from a consumer perspective about consumer topics: (of course B2B is very different, where other things matter) * products/software without DRM, always-online, analytics, tracking and spy "features" - bad for consumer personal privacy, and prevents second hand market, products cannot be owned anymore, try buying Windows 10, John Deer tractor, Tesla S without that crap * Cash money: those Davos attendee…

> and eliminated entire cash notes like the 500 EURO note

Good fucking riddance. It just was a gift to criminals.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#156

Post by anexprogrammer »

frik wrote: post #142

* IBM ThinkPad T41p/60. Lenovo T410/X210 where still somewhat fine. But these newer ultrabooks nowadays have less powerful specs than 5 year old notebooks. The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon isn't bad, but a far cry given it's ultrabook less powerful specs than an 5 year old high end notebook. And these shitty keyboard nowadays, give me back the old keyboard layout like grouped F1-F12 key, better placed Home/PgUp/PgDn/End…

Lenovo destroyed the Thinkpad legacy.

I gave up on them a few years ago when they dropped the 7 row keyboard. The 7 row keyboard was leagues ahead of any other laptop keyboard, ever. The replacement keyboard is awful. I hate the loss of web forward/back keys too. I hate chicklet keys. I hate pgup/dn placed as though I'll almost never use them. I still prefer the trackpoint over any touchpad.

I'd buy a retro Thinkpad, like you link, in a second. I'd Hackintosh or Linux it. Barring miracles, my next laptop will be a Mac.

A friend has a W540. It's horrible. Worst sound output of any machine I came across, horrible chicklet keyboard, and cracks in the keyboard surround that's design fault but Lenovo won't fix. All the once handy TP utilities are Adobe Air bloatware that take 5s+ to even open.

After 20 years he says it's his last TP.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#157

Post by kome »

avar wrote: post #116

A few things: Everything not being 4:3 screens. I found it better for programming than everything being cinematic screens. Back when monitor manufacturers were racing to make better / higher resolution monitors, instead of just leaving it at 1080p / 4k / whatever the current standard good enough for movies is. The GMail interface before it started auto-converting the textarea to HTML when edited externally. Console g…

> E-Mail before we lost the "text should be text and not goddamn HTML" war.

I am still fighting, and the war is not over.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#158

Post by fauigerzigerk »

frik wrote: post #127
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash was never a good store of value. You could easily lose everything to fire or theft over night. And governments can create inflation to erode the value of cash pretty quickly if they really want to. There is no erosion of the idea of ownership. As someone who is renting in London I can assure you that quarterly inspections and thick, dirty carpets are an effective reminder of the fact that you are either an owner…

You missed the point. Sure, there is a risk of inflation, but you can act immediately for your own good if there a slight warnings on the horizon. You can't do anything if it's out of reach like in recent history as the banks closed all ATMs like they did in Cyprus and Greece. But I wrote about daily usage of money, and not be limited or tracked in any way, like you are with non-cash money. About ownership, you misse…

>You missed the point. Sure, there is a risk of inflation, but you can act immediately for your own good if there a slight warnings on the horizon. [...] About ownership, you missed the point, London is a bad example, as it's very expensive own a house there

I think you are missing the point, because you're not seeing the connection between these symptoms.

Property in London is so expensive because our culture values ownership more than ever and because property is used as a store of value by those who already see the warning signs on the horizon (in various countries around the world).

I do agree to some extent with your tracking concerns when it comes to electronic payments. But we have to realize that tracking is not an inherent flaw/feature of electronic payments. It is the result of laws and regulations created by the governments we elected.

The point you are making about software licenses has very little to do with a shift away from ownership in my view. We never owned software, even when it was distributed on floppy disks. We never owned music even when it was distributed on vinyl. Tracking and onerous usage restrictions are a feature of the networked nature of modern software and of the distribution channels we use. Ownership rights that make these things possible have always been in place.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#159

Post by geuis »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #133
avar wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome's still fast, but other browsers caught up, and more importantly web developers took advantage of the increase in performance and started getting away with writing more bloated websites, resulting in much of the speed gains being nullified. Just try to use Chrome or Firefox to browse relatively lightweight websites (e.g. GNU.org), they're amazingly fast compared to what browsers used to be like before Chrome c…

Just try to interview as a front end engineer these days. Someone at Airbnb laughed at me because I used a for loop instead of lodash on an array. He said "wow, you write it old school." Why write fast code when you can write triple transpiled bloats bullshit vis a vis Babel, flow and jsx.

Come check us out at https://massdrop.com
Post reply on HN