For website of a purist software freedom company I was surprised to see Privacy Badger show up with a red 5: ajax.googleapis.com fonts.googleapis.com secure.gravatar.com fonts.gstatic.com code.jquery.com
What's wrong with any of those things?
Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
61–70 of 169 posts
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
No you don’t need better than 1080p but most developers need crisp text and I would like to go further and 4k 15inch displays would be perfect for me as it would allow me to have smaller text without a loss of quality.
No you just want fancy things. Whatever, that's fine. But it's not a requirement for 'most developers' - in fact the ones I know with high resolution laptops don't want them, they're just annoyed by lingering issues with UI scaling and tiny text. I can't think of a sane reason for having font sizes so small that you need 4k to display text properly. Text is plenty crisp at 1080. Also this is a laptop. More pixels mea…
I find it's only crisp enough when I use bitmap fonts, I prefer how vector fonts look on 4K but I'll still buy 1080p for the battery life.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
1080p is considered low res! Crazy the times we live in. There are still laptop manufacturers making 1366x768 displays, the worst resolution ever invented. I understand pixel density is nice, but for the vast majority of workflows you do not need anything better than 1080p on a 15" display.
No you don’t need better than 1080p but most developers need crisp text and I would like to go further and 4k 15inch displays would be perfect for me as it would allow me to have smaller text without a loss of quality.
It's a bit absurd to argue that you need a high pixel density to code. It's no longer an insane luxury, but even being a relatively younger programmer I remember 640x480 being the highest resolution my first personal computer could display. What fundamentally changed about programming that now we can't even do it without 200 PPI displays?
Obviously, nothing. High resolution for most people is still just a 'nice to have.' But even 1080p@15" will produce relatively crisp text. I'd argue East Asian languages are the only ones to significantly improve in legibility, as sub-pixel rendering pretty much does what it needs to do for English nowadays.
That being said, I absolutely will always go for high DPI and everything, I just don't think it's sane to argue it's an absolute must for what amounts to typing and reading text.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Embedded) System engineer, so lot's of hex typing and editing. It's a pain without full numpad.
How do you go about entering a-f in hex? Genuine question, I find I quite annoying when I need to do it, even with a number pad
I guess practice is what matters most, it happens naturally now -- right hand enters digits, while left inserts a-f, x when needed.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#65For website of a purist software freedom company I was surprised to see Privacy Badger show up with a red 5: ajax.googleapis.com fonts.googleapis.com secure.gravatar.com fonts.gstatic.com code.jquery.com
What's wrong with any of those things?
Libraries are probably fine, but pulling them from Google means that Google can track you
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> numpads on a laptop are a terrible idea. I disagree completely. Having a numpad on a laptop is the only way of getting cursors and function keys (from Home to Insert to Delete) in a sane place. On my current laptop, were it not for a numpad, I'd have to press a Fn key every time I wanted to use Home/End. I'd also need to hunt for Delete somewhere above the Backspace, and PageUp/PageDown being on both sides of Up ar…
My HP laptop has a single column with delete/home/pgup/pgdn/end, like this: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/3646... This works very nicely for me.
Ok, now I know what I'd need to do to finally switch to hjkl (for arrows) when using Vim, I'd just need to buy a keyboard like yours ;)
Joking aside, a keyboard is a very personal thing and picking the right one depends on many factors, from the shape and size of your hands and fingers to your chair and desk setup, to your OS and programs you use. For most people, it probably doesn't matter that much, but for people who use keyboards for work, it's IMHO worth it to take your time and choose a keyboard that is precisely right.
As an example, I was perfectly happy with a standard desktop keyboard when I used Vim, even though Esc is rather far from home row (but it's easy to find by touch). Once I switched to Emacs, with its famous dependence on pressing and holding (as opposed to just hitting Esc in Vim) Ctrl and Alt, I almost immediately started getting RSI in my left hand. I quickly noticed that it happens only on the full-sized keyboard, not on (most) laptop keyboard. I considered switching away from Emacs, but, as with many cults, you can only leave in a body bag, so I had to find another way of dealing with it.
After a lot of research, I found that Logitech K340[1] is the keyboard for me. As you can see, the Ctrl key is where it should be (in the bottom left corner - sometimes there's a Fn key there), is bigger than usual and much closer to the home row than in full-sized keyboards. This eliminated pain in my hand almost entirely. Full-size Enter key and Backspace (their shrunk versions are evil), quite workable placement of function keys above the numpad, the Fn key placed where it doesn't bother me, and arrow keys which are easily found by touch are all essential features, which match my workflow very well. The only key which is not as accessible as I'd like is Insert (the top one), but I don't use it very often.
I'm sure there are tons of people who would find that keyboard unworkable for their workflows, though. I guess what I want to say is that if something works for you, then you should just use that. Still, you should make sure it actually works, because a wrist pain a year down the road is not a pleasant thing.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#67I really want one of these, but the ergonomics look awful. Is there a technical reason they only come with low resolution (1080p) screens? (“Linux” is not a valid reason...) Also, as much as I would like a 15” screen, the off center keyboard is a deal-breaker. It’s just asking for RSI. Does anyone own one? How is the trackpad / keyboard / battery life / fan noise? Maybe I can deal with 1080p in exchange for a reasona…
1080p is considered low res! Crazy the times we live in. There are still laptop manufacturers making 1366x768 displays, the worst resolution ever invented. I understand pixel density is nice, but for the vast majority of workflows you do not need anything better than 1080p on a 15" display.
It's low considering that price tag. The reason we didn't get this as normal 10 years ago was because of collusion so it's right to expect in 2018(probably when the next batch ships) to have some good screens.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#68You can also order Dell machines with ME disabled. Additionally, most current Dell systems can disable Intel ME in the BIOS settings as well. This is a trap door setting - once disabled, there is no way to turn it back on. From what I've heard, this disabling is done through the Intel HAM (high assurance mode), but I have no idea what the differences between the Dell and Purism approaches are.
Could you provide sources for this? I have never heard of such a Dell machine... My understanding was that there are currently no real options to run an Intel CPU laptop without ME.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
1080p is considered low res! Crazy the times we live in. There are still laptop manufacturers making 1366x768 displays, the worst resolution ever invented. I understand pixel density is nice, but for the vast majority of workflows you do not need anything better than 1080p on a 15" display.
No you don’t need better than 1080p but most developers need crisp text and I would like to go further and 4k 15inch displays would be perfect for me as it would allow me to have smaller text without a loss of quality.
This is not true at all for 'most developers'. I have a 32" 4k display and I still use DPI scaling. I've also done development on as low as 480p without much of a hindrance. Sure big resolutions are nice, but not at all a must.
Re: Purism Librem Laptops Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine
#70I really want one of these, but the ergonomics look awful. Is there a technical reason they only come with low resolution (1080p) screens? (“Linux” is not a valid reason...) Also, as much as I would like a 15” screen, the off center keyboard is a deal-breaker. It’s just asking for RSI. Does anyone own one? How is the trackpad / keyboard / battery life / fan noise? Maybe I can deal with 1080p in exchange for a reasona…
> Also, as much as I would like a 15” screen, the off center keyboard is a deal-breaker. It’s just asking for RSI. Agree. Is entering numbers with a numpad so common use case that it justifies the inclusion of mini-numpad at the cost of off-centering the main keyboard?
It's useful in 3D programs like Blender for navigating around the 3D space.