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

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

#791

Post by exabrial »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #790
exabrial wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the distinction between a "Pro" model and the normal model then? I thought that was the point of having a "pro" lineup, was so serious work could be done and normal consumers would be steered towards the Air or MacBook line....

A lot of folks can do serious work without a built in Ethernet port.

Right, at home on a 30mpbs/5uo internet connection? Or in an office with a business class symmetric fiber at 150mbps with no busting or shaping? There isn't enough wireless spectrum available in USA for more than 5-10 people in a 50yd radius to get full bandwidth. And the backhaul to wireless APs is 1gig, so not only are you splitting airtime, you're splitting wiretime.

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

#792

Post by auxym »

realo wrote: post #343

RPN HP calculators: HP29C (my first one) and HP41C (did university with it). A long time ago, some demon soul from hell decided to kill them product lines. The world never was the same, afterwards.

Swissmicros makes replicas of the 15 and 41 (among others). I need to get one to replace my 35s (keys starting to break after a couple years) some day.

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

#793

Post by rayiner »

rsync wrote: post #761
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…

"Everything not being 4:3 screens. I found it better for programming than everything being cinematic screens." It may interest you to know that there is a new, modern, 1:1 screen for sale from a reputable company, today - the EIZO FlexScan EV2730QFX: http://www.amazon.com/FlexScan-EV2730QFX-Monitor-1920x1920-E... Please, please buy one (or three) of these, as I did, and place your dollar votes for screen innovation l…

But wide-screen laptops are just the right size for side-by-side 80x25 emacs windows.

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

#794

Post by sparkie »

akavel wrote: post #236
mrlyc wrote: post #195

PC Outline. It's a DOS-based outliner. In 1986, my manager said "Here, you're organised. You'll like this" and he was right - I did. So much so that I bought my own copy. I still use it every day in a DOSBox DOS emulator on Windows 7 and Linux. I use it for passwords, todo and done lists, keeping track of work done for clients, functional decomposition, shopping lists and the steps for configuring and compiling the L…

From quick googling, there's some discussion where people are suggesting alternatives: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2200/5 Personally, I haven't ever used PC Outline, so I don't know its features, but from many free outliners I tried I liked the Noteliner. Unfortunately I couldn't find a replacement on Linux (and I don't have time to learn Emacs + org-mode)

Give Leo (http://leoeditor.com/) a try on Linux.

Also, there's not much learning to do for just emacs + org mode. By default there are context menus to help which also inform you what keyboard shortcuts are available. You might need to get used to some "odd" keyboard shortcuts, or turn on cua-mode to make it behave like you're used to, but otherwise, you don't need any advanced knowledge to get started.

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

#795

Post by bitwize »

Retric wrote: post #416
bitwize wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're pretty much the equivalent of the Japanese soldier who got stranded in the Philippines and kept fighting WWII until the 1970s. HTML mail won . If you work in an office they will use either Exchange or Google Apps; Exchange's default configuration is a fuck you to text-based mail clients.   Hope you like all your email looking like this, because the only response you’ll get from your sysadmin should…

You can just pipe your email through something that removes HTML. Outlook seems to just ignore line breaks by default. But, there is probably a mime type to get around that.

It's not just Outlook.

Exchange adds this mush to emails which were sent in plain text.

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

#796

Post by sparkie »

rsoto wrote: post #539

I'm gonna echo on Winamp. Now a Linux user, I really miss a real good mp3 player. Winamp was light, aesthetic and very good on its design. One feature I still miss is the global hotkeys, you could map Ctrl+Shift+Z to go back one song, on any window you were (hence the 'global'). I used to map the Z-X-C-V-B (the default bindings for Previous/Play/Pause/Stop/Next) to the CTRL+Shift+$key binding, and I felt like a wizar…

I'd recommend taking the full unix dive and ditch your GUI centred apps for MPD. You can any of dozens of GUI clients to interact with the daemon (http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients).

Keyboard shortcuts can be done via your DE, by shelling out to 'mpc play', and such.

My concern for music is less playing it (that's easy), but more about organizing it, for which MusicBrainz Picard wins.

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

#797

Post by corecoder »

frik wrote: post #726
corecoder wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Italy. Nobody ever used €500 bills for anything else than crossing the Swiss border with as much cash (cash unknown to tax authorities, of course) as possible. I have never ever seen a €500 bill, and if someone has to give you, say, €1000, it will be 10 * €100 or more likely 20 * €50.

It fine and common to buy a new car from a certificated car dealer or build officially a house with cash money - it's a major legal payment option after-all. Your experience is different, as you live in Italy which was hit especially hard by the 2008 crisis has high dept, is fighting against corruption, etc. You would need a truck for your €50 notes which makes it unreasonable.

The limit is currently €3000 for cash payments in Italy, so it's unlikely that you can use cash to pay for a car.

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

#798

Post by SixSigma »

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…

My xbox 360 has never been connected to the internet

And I'm a top poster!

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

#799

Post by dpark »

tedmiston wrote: post #788
dpark wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Feedly for a while and found it to be flaky, in pretty much the same ways as Digg reader.

Which ways? (I haven't tried Digg Reader.) I feel like Feedly is okay. Free native apps and sync is nice. I wish it didn't auto mark read after 30 days though. I tend to do my rss processing in huge batches and miss stuff because of that.

I haven't used it in a while, but my recollection is that it would regularly "forget" that I'd already read items, and days of stuff would show as new again. And other times it would show feeds as unread even though it didn't have any items shown unread.

I also recall not liking the interface but cannot recall now exactly what it was. Feedly is the one that provides a chrome extension instead of just a website, right?

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

#800

Post by SixSigma »

tajen wrote: post #688
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…

Like, you miss when you could configure a Cisco router without using the cloud sysadmin console? I miss when I owned my Mac OS X. I'd use Linux just for the sake of having a non-cloud system. Concerning money, I don't understand why we wouldn't track criminals when using banknotes. There are only 15bn Euro banknotes, all numbered. You could track them easily in Postgres. 90% banknotes change hands only once before go…

I like the idea of perpetual leases for some items E.g. Washing machine, fridge etc.

I would take solid construction and reliability of those over planned obsolescence.

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