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

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

#701

Post by ams6110 » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #405

kome wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

I read my email in emacs, and use w3m to format the HTML from Exchange and Gmail users. Works really well. Does a good job with tables too.

I want to try using new emacs web browser (eww) instead but haven't had the time.

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

#702

Post by ams6110 » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

tremendo wrote: post #529

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…

Perhaps, but why give up if you're not missing any benefit? I still pretty much can rely on something not being readable as plain text also not being worth my time.

That goes the same for websites that aren't readable in text-based or non-javascript browsers.

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

#703

Post by ams6110 » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

Teckla wrote: post #574

qw wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem In the business world is Outlook. For some reason they decided to ignore line breaks in plain text by default, which makes plain text a broken mess

The main problem In the business world is Outlook. For some reason they decided to ignore line breaks in plain text by default, which makes plain text a broken mess There's an option in Outlook to turn that "feature" off, but of course, nobody does. It's a horrible, terrible default feature of Outlook.

It's also their problem. They send me HTML and I have to deal with that. I send them plain text, so they can do likewise.

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

#704

Post by ThePaco » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

geuis wrote: post #159

dclowd9901 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm still sad Massdrop removed the vaping section, got a good deal on a keyboard though!

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

#705

Post by patates » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

mehrzad wrote: post #49

I'm worried that DownThemAll and other major add-ons will be abandoned with Firefox's changes soon.

what do you mean? are they switching their engine? I can't endure another tragedy like opera :(

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

#706

Post by parenthesis » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

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…

The annoyingness of cinematic screens is increased futher if your favourite TV shows are from the 80s and 90s, and your favourite movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s.

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

#707

Post by joonap » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

joshmarinacci wrote: post #614

iTunes. It's become a mess. In the old days it was so simple to manage an MP3 archive. It would even properly export ID3 tags. These days what I want is an MP3 archive in the cloud. Hold my mp3s, not your pre-licensed copies with different metadata. Stream my mp3s to any app, with an API. I don't want your mp3 store. I don't want your crappy Spotify clone. I just want my mp3s in the cloud. I'd pay for this. Anyone el…

I think Loop for VOX has this, check http://coppertino.com/loop-for-vox

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

#708

Post by ams6110 » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

lettercarrier wrote: post #489

The Telephone with Dial Tone and associated Busy Signal. A busy signal meant nobody could contact me; Also, by either not answering the phone or by simply taking the receiver off the hook I controlled interruptions. And, nobody became concerned if they did not hear from me in an hour, 1/2 day, day or even week. And I had no concern if I did not hear from others either in that timeframe. So the "tool" to maintain priv…

The introduction of voice mail at work is what killed the efficiency of telephone communication. It became very easy to let a call go to voice mail, and then claim you never got the message, or your voice mail wasn't working, etc. It was much harder when when a secretary took your calls and kept a log of messages.

Voice mail and then email (esp. auto-responding "I'm out of the office") became great work-avoidance enablers, whereas before the telephone was a great productivity enhancer.

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

#709

Post by geocrasher » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #297

skrebbel wrote: post #165

Jasc Paint Shop Pro. This tool had the useful half of Illustrator's features and the useful half of Photoshop's, it was blazing fast, and it combined them in a single program so you could mix vector and raster layers. This made it absolutely perfect for web-targeted graphics work. It was the first software I legally bought because it was so good and still affordable (a fraction of the price of Adobe's stuff - somethi…

I still have a working copy of PSP 7.04 on my Windows 10 machine and it's still my goto tool for tweaking images.

My wife also has PSP 7 on her Windows 10 machine, and now after reading this thread, I'm going to install it on mine too. It really is quite useful.

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

#710

Post by davb » Sat, May 14, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #500

davb wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt it. They'd be cutting off massive markets where internet connectivity isn't consistently good (most of the world). Sure, Nintendo are struggling to find their place in the home console market right now but they're more conservative when it comes to changing the distribution/sales model.

> "They'd be cutting off massive markets where internet connectivity isn't consistently good (most of the world)." With all due respect, countries without decent Internet infrastructure are unlikely to be places where there are plenty of people with the spare cash to blow on a console. Furthermore, Nintendo has said that the NX is not designed to be a replacement for the Wii U, meaning that Nintendo may still plan to…

> With all due respect, countries without decent Internet infrastructure are unlikely to be places where there are plenty of people with the spare cash to blow on a console.

I think you underestimate the woeful state of broadband in many developed nations.

Here in the UK, many non-rural areas struggle to get more than 8Mbps down, 1Mbps up. With more devices in the home putting demands on connections and many ISPs capping usage (or offering unlimited but heavily throttled connections), downloading or streaming games isn't always viable.

In my own case, I recently moved house and went from an 80Mbps FTTC connection (the fastest available in my city) to 6Mbps. It doesn't take much more than someone at home streaming Netflix while another browses the internet or downloads a 25GB game on the Xbox to make streaming games completely unworkable.

I know the situation is very similar in Australia, New Zealand, areas in Spain..

We often see this skewed perception from American companies that everyone in a first-world country has consistent and fast connectivity. A lot of US products and concepts just die here for that reason. The original Xbox One concept of being download-only would have been a complete failure here.

It's not just poor people (who "are unlikely to be places where there are plenty of people with the spare cash to blow on a console") who struggle for good connectivity.