I’d never defend the lack of web based configuration, but there is an argument to be made that if the app uses Bluetooth to communicate with a router (though I don’t know if that’s true in this case), it is inarguably easier to configure for the average person who is intimidated by having to work with an IP address in any way.
I’ve never personally used the chore term, but it doesn’t bother me to see it and I don’t feel it has a negative connotation.
Cleaning my kitchen after a meal may be a chore, but it’s not an intrinsically bad or unpleasant experience most of the time, it’s just good hygiene and afterwards I have the satisfaction of things being clean. Not cleaning the kitchen feels way worse to me as it ultimately leads to other far more unpleasant situations.
Such it is with updating dependencies, it generally needs to be done, so it’s good to do it, but it’s in no way noteworthy, so chore describes it perfectly, to me it signals that: “it’s work that needed to be done, but not for a feature, functionality change or bug fix on this particular code base, so you’re unlikely to see much change”.
I only realized in my 30s that I had been tying my shoelaces wrong my whole life and a super minor change in my method has changed them from coming undone multiple times per day (unless double knotted), to instead staying tied the whole day with just a standard shoelace knot [0] (also on Ian's site).
This article's web page actually has the essential note:
> NOTE: If your finished knot comes out crooked (eg. loops pointing heel-to-toe), it's probably because you tie your Starting Knot the opposite way to mine. This will result in an un-balanced knot, which sits crooked and comes undone more easily. See my Granny Knot page for more information.
Back when I still used to browse Imgur, there was a post illustrating how to identify and fix this easy to make mistake. It turns out that I was starting with the lace left-over-right as opposed to right-over-left (or vice-versa, not sure off-hand).
This quite literally changed my life, just a small muscle memory tweak and now my laces easily stay tied the whole day with a regular knot which is also super easy to release as well.
Learning this has also changed my life, but maybe not for the better. Now every time I see someone I know and their shoes are tied in a granny knot I have to waste a bunch of calories deciding if they'd appreciate me telling them.
I encounter this all the time, I just want to help people and pass along things I’ve learned but it’s not always received well. For sure, many adults would not want to be told how to tie their shoelaces.
My only advice is to start by approaching the problem. “Hey, do your shoelaces come untied often?”
Rolling up headphone wires (or any wires) works best when you create a looped bundle and alternate between overhand and underhand. It stops it from getting twisted and tangled. When done right, you can hold one end, throw the under end, and it all unfurls neatly.
Learned this from a theatre stagehand and have been using it ever since.
The Spectacle Factory recommends, in order, (1) warm water and a microfiber cloth, (2) Zeiss lens wipes, or (3) an ultrasonic bath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4lJ_5Tg9Ms
They recommend (v=5FUUgO95sb4) against both detergent for the sake of the lens coatings and against sprays which may cause grease to accumulate around the lens rim.
If you're the kind of person who has bought a dozen pairs of cheap Zenni's... the lens coating gets visibly damaged every time I've used hand soap on them. I now just blast them with hot water and wipe dry with a lens cloth. I don't know whether hand soap is a problem for more expensive brands, but it definitely is for Zenni's.
40+ year glasses wearer here who learned this perhaps only 10 years ago, I think this is the correct way. The one annoying part is the difference that the glass coating makes. The water just falls off some of my glasses with barely as much as a light tap. Others length tend to hang onto the water in beads, so I have to actually wait for it to dry (or walk around with water spots, which I also do when impatient...)
I’ve been wearing glasses for just under 30 years, and only last month I decided to actually try and clean my glasses with the tiny microfibres cloth they give you when you buy a pair of glasses rather than throwing it out because it gets annoying in your case because you just use your t-shirt… I’m not a 100% microfibre guy
>Cleaning your glasses properly – what to do —
Use this method for both for [sic] thorough cleaning of your glasses at home, and fast, effective cleaning when you are out and about: rub a microfiber cloth or a folded lens cleaning wipe gently over the lens surface to remove coarse dirt particles.
Use a clean microfiber cloth. ANYTHING ELSE will scratch your lenses up. (This is probably the most common no-no I see. People will clean their glasses with anything on them and smudge/scratch them instead.)
Two cloths are ideal: one for cleaning and another for polishing.
If you're using soap and water, apply a tiny amount of soap onto both sides of the lens --- less than a grain of rice --- then apply water and rub with your fingers until clean. Skip to polish step.
If using cleaner, spray cleaner onto the cloth, NOT onto the lens. Spray onto one side of the cloth so that you have a wet side and a dry side.
(You can use water instead of cleaner in a pinch.)
Three passes.
First pass: with wet side, wipe lens in lines from top of frame to bottom. NOT in circles. (You'll spread the dirt around this way, making the cleaning process take way longer and potentially introducing scratches.)
Second pass: Repeat first pass with dry side of cloth.
Repeat first and second passes until lenses look mostly clear.
Third pass, if you have a polishing cloth: Wipe polishing clothes in circles until lenses are clear.
Your lenses will last forever if cleaned this way.
The cleaner steps above also work on any glass surface, like laptop screens or car windows.
>Use a clean microfiber cloth. ANYTHING ELSE will scratch your lenses up.
No, it wont. I'm cleaning mine for decades with anything at hand (cotton shirts, napkins, etc) and not a scratch.
And of course there's the little fact that microfiber cloth is a recent synthetic thing. People used cotton and linen squares, or chamois leather ones if they felt fancy, to clean their glasses.
yes they do. it's not so much the cotton fabric that will scratch your lenses; it's the dirt on them. cotton weaves leave bigger holes for dirt to get caught in; much much bigger than microfiber, which is why it's best for the job.
I don't know why people say this. When I wore glasses I cleaned them with my cotton shirts for over a decade and they didn't get scratched up, at all. I don't see how cotton would scratch glass to begin with.
Very few people wear actual glass lenses. They are something like 1-2% of the market from what I can tell. Everyone else wears plastic lenses, which are much lighter and thus more comfortable to wear. Also slightly safer due to much reduced risk of shattering with plastic lenses. I've never even had an optometrist offer glass lenses. I think you'd have to specifically ask for them.
But yeah, dust can also definitely scratch the coatings on glass lenses, too.
Are we still talking about glasses, not contacts right? Because everyone over here (Norway) gets glass lenses in glasses on prescription. They are much better optical quality and not uncomfortable in the slightest, and can be customized to individual vision. Mine have glass from Rodenstock, a long time camera lens supplier but other vendors like Zeiss or Swarowski are common too.
You can always tell if it's glass by tint of PVD coating. Polycarbonate or acrylic lenses can't be coated. Plastic's only advantage is low manufacturing cost.
> You can always tell if it's glass by tint of PVD coating. Polycarbonate or acrylic lenses can't be coated.
This not true. Plastic can absolutely be PVD coated. You can buy cheap sunglasses with PVD mirror coatings on plastic lenses. I’m pretty sure Rodenstock’s own plastic coatings (e.g. “Rodenstock technology Solitaire® Protect Plus 2”) are also a PVD process.
> Plastic's only advantage is low manufacturing cost.
And weight. And shatter resistance. And higher refractive index options.
In USA I've been told by multiple glasses sellers (wrongly, but they believed it) that no companies sell glass lenses anymore. It's apparently rare enough that a lot of stores think it doesn't exist.
They live in an imaginary world where no one ever cleaned glasses until microfiber cloths were widely available.
To clean glasses safely you basically need a soft, clean cloth. Cotton is totally fine. You could get away with a soft clean sponge, too. Or even a soft-ish piece of paper (which is what most disposable lens words are.)
There is lens-cleaning paper (I used to use this in photgraphy), and facial tissue-grade paper.
The latter does tend to scratch over time, if perhaps only slighly, but the damage can accumulate.
I'm on team soft-cotton, with a very-well-worn bandana serving as my usual cleaning material, plastic lenses, no scratches.
Another sin, for glasses, is laying them lens-down, or face-up, on surfaces when not in use. Lens-down of course grinds the lens into whatever is on the surface. Face-up, as you'd wear them, is vulnerable to flipping over (most glasses are top-heavy), so upside down is preferable. Or folded, with the earpieces down and lenses up. In a case is of course preferable to either.
Leaving glasses randomly on chairs, sofas, beds, etc., is also an invitation to catastrophe.
I've lived with people doing many of the above, and their glasses were perpetually scratched and damaged. Given the high cost of a new pair for many of them, this was ... curious.
Most believe whatever marketing material or sponsored "expert" advice is presented to them for "proper care", without actually checking. At least glasses clenaning is a harmless area - people do the same for supplements, diets, and all kinds of health advice too.
Yea, this reads very meticulous to me.
I clean my glasses under running hot water and the micro fibre cloth.
I wash the micro fibre cloth with dish soap from time to time.
In a bind I clean the glass with any clean fabric that feels soft.
The thing about many of the "proper" headphone roll-ups is they are dependent on a particular level of minimum bending radius, tension tolerance, and elastic deformation in the cords.
To put it more simply, many of them will simply ruin your headphones if they're done with reasonable frequency.
For thin earbud type cords, just coil them loosely in a small plastic bag or use a loose bundle secured with a broad velcro strap.
I've been using Ian's for the past few months since it was last posted here. It's quite good to the point I prefer it but wouldn't say it's changed my life.
I tried writing a similar comment. Yours is much clearer. This 100%. As a runner I used to have to re-tie multiple times per run. I corrected my mistake with this same fix probably a decade ago and haven’t had a loose shoelace since.
Back when I was running, I used the "lace lock" method[0] because a loose heel would drive me to distraction (and because I wore clown shoes with wide toe boxes, there's no pressure from the front to keep the foot stable.)
For sure. I've taken to using a similar method over the last couple of years as I've increased miles and needed to take steps (ha) to take better care of my feet over longer distances. I wouldn't recommend this setup for more active sports with lots of change of direction, but for steady plodding it provides a very consistent and dependable stride for a lot of miles.
I learning this on sailing trip, reefing knot is simply shoelace knot, but you need to make sure each loop is opposing. Game change. And then you learn about bowline.
> coming undone multiple times per day (unless double knotted)
You have bad laces. I thought this too before I tried different laces. Turns out different tensions and elasticities give different strengths of knots.
For example I have some military boots which came with slightly stretchy laces. They NEVER come undone, ever. They were the first pair that switched me on to this, and since then I have always bought laces with slight stretch to them, and the knots always stay done up.
In contrast when you buy a pair of fashion trainers, the laces in them are usually terrible and come undone several times per day as you have noted.
No, it had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the laces.
It was because I was essentially tying a granny knot instead of a reef knot and anyone who knows anything about knots would realize that of course they would keep coming undone.
And for the record, since learning how to tie the correct knot (over 10 years ago now), I’ve had no problem with laces that have come with any of the following brands of shoes:
But a standard shoelace knot is just so much better, not only can it hold for an entire day (even on, according to you, "bad" shoelaces), but its slip release makes it instant to untie at the end of the day.
Before when I used a granny knot, shoelaces were a regular nuisance for me, but since switching to a reef knot over a decade ago they have not been at all, and I have never had to buy other shoelaces either.
It confuses me that you seem to be defending the granny knot which is objectively worse in every way and you come across as wilfully stubborn to your own detriment.
> Before when I used a granny knot, shoelaces were a regular nuisance for me
I know, you must have said this 2 or 3 times, and you are calling me stubborn?!
I'm defending the granny knot because its great. Its what we teach children, and it works perfectly fine.
As you are repeating yourself I will too.
I used to struggle before I started buying proper good quality laces. Now that I do, granny knots stay strong all the time and there is no need for anything else.
I am very happy with this by the way, you do not need to convince me otherwise. I am not trying to convince you to use them, only telling you that the opinion you are spouting on granny knots is incorrect.
I’m a big fan of the no-tie Quicklace system that Salomon use for my running and hiking shoes. Hard to go back to slow, fiddly traditional shoelaces once you’ve used quicklaces.
On the other hand, I’d probably be better at tying knots…
"On" brand running shoes have great laces for knot-holding, but they're so thin it's awkward to manipulate them to actually tie the knot in the first place.
Before your muscle memory is updated, all you need to remember is how to “quality check” the knot when you’re done. If the loops are perpendicular, it’s wrong, they should be aligned with the laces.
If it landed up perpendicular, start over (i.e. the part before you make the loops) with doing the opposite of what you did before e.g. right-over-left rather than left-over-right.
For me it was very easy to fix the pre-loop stage, trying to change the loop stage seemed way harder to me as I was already so practiced at it.
I do a similar quality check when tying a square knot (right over left, left over right but without the bows - probably the default knot for something you don't intend to ever untie and don't have a Scout's encyclopedic knowledge of more specialized knots) - since it doesn't have the bows, the quality check is that it should have a line of symmetry whereas if you repeat the same direction twice the finished knot is more of a spiral, having no line of symmetry.
Not sure what my knot is called but it’s never come undone or gone wonky for me. At step five of the standard knot above, just pull the yellow loop into the empty space on the left and the blue loop to the right. Surely that saves you having to change hands?
I learnt this distinction only in my 40s. The problem is muscle memory now. But all I do is after I do my first loop, I undo it and undo it again, looping it in the opposite direction. If I untie my shoes I'm less likely to undo that loop. So I can just retie with muscle memory.
I used to hate shoe laces becoming undone multiple times a day... now I tie them and they literally last YEARS.
Article says key fobs are the same across all their cars and this looks the same as mine for a Sealion 5, there is no hinge for the key you just pull it out.
Likely the article authors just assumed from looking at the scan, if they’d actually tried to remove the key they would have realised their mistake.
In South Africa we have a TV license which any shop selling TV’s is required by law to report the buyer’s TV license number for any purchase.
The idea is that it funds public broadcasting and productions thereof, but like a lot of SOEs here, there is loads of corruption and inefficiencies, I only use my TV for streaming of content which is not produced locally, so I resent having to pay it each year.
However, it’s apparently a mission to get off it, even if you sell your TV you’re most certainly going to be harassed for years by debt collectors and what not.
Unlike your case though (where I expect the fine is not nothing), it’s only like R250/y (like 13USD) and they’ve smartly (which is surprising for an otherwise largely incompetent org), made it easy to pay. I get an SMS reminder and can have paid it by credit card within 2 minutes. So I’ll probably not bother trying to get off it as it’s so much more effort and a pretty small amount of money and hassle.
Heh, took me about a year after moving from SA to Ireland to get them to leave me alone about my tv license.
Here they have a tv license as well, but so far I've sidestepped it because I shipped my TV over, but one day I'll probably need to pay for one again. Only problem is now its something like 250 euro, not Ront, so it's a lot more pricey!
I'd rather pay EUR 250 a year when I know the money is used for genuine public benefit rather than ZAR 250 a year where it's mostly enriching people who don't do anything of real value.
The successful standards, platforms, libraries, tools, etc. will be the ones that LLMs can understand. Like a good GitHub readme, or website, or Discord community, I strongly feel that making sure you've (perhaps personally) written enough about your offering for AI to understand it will be an important factor in how successful it can be in markets or communities.
I wrote a similar HN comment around this yesterday, but the short version is that we found for our product that the years of investment in our Docs (which were seemingly never good enough) are now paying enormous dividends in that LLMs seem to understand our product really well. This has manifested in the LLM in our product being highly effective and a few additional clients who found us through AI chats. Turns out the problem with our Docs wasn't so much with their content, but rather that people just weren't looking at them much.
Funny timing for this article to appear on the front page as I was just thinking of Zendesk today.
We kind of tried Zendesk maybe 8 years ago and even integrated the chat into our Electron app.
What put me off though is that support articles didn’t work off markdown, there was no way I wanted us having all our docs formatting and images locked up by them. We had already started using DocFX which was working pretty well for us.
As it happens, the integrated chat wasn’t that popular amongst our users anyway so we cancelled it not long after.
Fast forward to today, and it turns out that in the age of AI and LLMs that our Docs (which over time had become really good) are an enormous asset.
They allowed the AI integration in our product to work really well since the LLMs already understood a lot about our product from our Docs and they also behave as kind of marketing material as they organically show up in search results or LLM chats (we’ve gained a couple of clients who found us through ChatGPT).
A funny thing about our Docs, we always felt they were lacking and resigned ourselves to doing the best we could, even though it seemed they would never be good enough.
Then seemingly all of a sudden this year, we were almost surprised to find that they actually do seem to be quite good now.
I think it’s largely that we were continuously investing in them, but also that once we saw how LLMs could answer questions on our product really well, it became apparent that a lot of our customers just weren’t really looking at them, but now many of them kind of are, just via an LLM.
When I was little and playing SimCity 2000 I looked at the tax rates for the city and noticed that the sales tax rate was like 2%, and based on our 14% VAT at the time, it seemed super low to me so I upped it to 12% and was surprised at how unhappy the citizens were.
This gave me the impression that Americans wouldn’t be happy with a significant sales tax, or perhaps this was a city sales tax on an existing state sales tax, which yes, would be outrageous, or maybe Americans get taxed in some other way which makes up for our VAT.
Anyway, I look back and chuckle at my own lack of knowledge at the time.
I would love a VAT tax instead of the never ending stream of taxes we pay on everything else.
Americans are stupid. They see a higher tax on an iPhone they don't need, they will cry about it.
But they pay more at the end of the year on income tax, property tax, car registration, etc., they could care less.
Most Americans don't even look at their pay stub, and are more than happy to overpay their income taxes every paycheck so they get a bigger tax return at the end of the year.
They don't realize that money was theirs to begin with.
They complain about not being able to become wealthy while they give the government an interest free loan, when they could be investing that money and earning on it.
I’m pretty happy with my Omada controlled EAPs around my house.
Running Omada on my Windows Server was painful (doesn’t really run properly as a service, software updates are a chore), but since I moved it to run on Proxmox using a super simple LXC image (I maybe got terminology wrong here) it’s been very nice.
Supposedly I should have excellent roaming between the APs, but I’m not sure how to check. Certainly, walking from one end of the house the other while on a Teams or WhatsApp call on my phone has maybe only a super minimal amount of time that I might not hear the other person (sub second for sure, if at all), but mostly I don’t notice.
Author is correct that if you don’t live in the house long, the overheads such as transfer duties and legal fees make it somewhat expensive.
But over here we have a pretty high interest rate of around 10% and comparatively high inflation rate, which makes the initial purchase of a house be a bit challenging, but if you start paying more than the minimum as soon as possible you can find yourself in a financially more comfortable position.
My bank allows me to have something they call an access facility on my bond account (the account for the debt on my house). With this I can transfer extra money into my bond at any time and I can draw this extra money out at any time too, this extra money counts as extra paid on the principal.
This essentially means that any extra money I put in it is worth about 10% p/a in terms of the interest it saves me.
They calculate interest per day so even if extra money sits in there for only a few days, depending on the amount the interest saved could be worth a coffee or possibly a meal.
Although I settle my credit card every month, everything I route through it and don’t have to pay back interest free for the next 30-45 days is essentially saving me that portion of interest on my bond, so easily over a percent. And that’s before credit card rewards.
And while I don’t recommend this except for the most financially disciplined as it is a little precarious feeling, I have a second credit card which I’m able to settle using my first credit card, this adds yet another 30 days of essentially interest saving to me.
It’s a great way to save for something big over say a year or two, even if you draw everything you deposited out again two years later, it’s saved you from the interest in the meantime, so you’re still better off.
Then there is the effect of inflation. If you’ve been able to put a good amount extra into your bond each month, you will find that after 5 years or so it’s probably less financially burdensome than renting.
This is because since you bought the place, property prices have gone up, so has rent and so has your salary, but your principle debt has not increased with it, meaning you’re paying no more than you were 5 years ago for the monthly instalments, but due to inflation it is comparatively less expensive.
Anyway, that’s the financials aspect, but on the quality of life aspect, a few years ago we finally bought a house that should be very nice for our family for the next 20-30 years, in terms of size, comforts and security.
We also bought a house with an old interior and renovated it, making the bathrooms and kitchens modern and how we wanted them. Was also able to chase conduits into all the walls (brick and mortar houses are the norm here) so that every room has CAT6 going to it.
Is South Africa a place your family will want to be (or be able to be) for the next 20-30 years? What are you doing for electric power, water, and physical safety from violent thieves?
Electricity has been essentially uninterrupted since the last load shedding about two years ago. I did get some solar panels and an inverter installed while load shedding was common as I work from home and didn’t want the stress due to lack of power. Another thing I put in our new kitchen is a couple of gas hobs next to the main induction ones, allows us to cook even during power outages. But as I said, no real outages in two years now.
Water is quite reliable, maybe interrupted half a dozen times in a year. I have 2kl of water backup tanks and a booster pump so I don’t generally feel any outage, although not uncommon, I expect that most middle class don’t have backup tanks like this. Regional water infrastructure hasn’t been keeping up with growth, so there is a large issue looming there.
Crime is common, but not so common that most people have been a victim of it. Most (middle class) people have house alarms linked to armed response services. I’m a member of community association which amongst other services they provide from membership fees, they also have a special arrangement with a security company and additional patrol vehicles are dedicated to our suburb.
Most security systems are door sensors and interior passive beams. I did however add outside beams which tends to catch intruders by surprise and gives early warning. I actually had an intruder in my garden last year and the outside beams caught the guy by surprise, he had dashed by the time the armed response got here. Harrowing for sure, but not tragic fortunately. Since then I added some IP cameras and there was a gap in my electric fencing above my garage which is where it seems they got in from, so I also had that remediated.
Our suburb (like many others, but not most) has road closures (gates get closed across most streets on the suburbs border) in effect except during morning and evening peak traffic times, this helps a lot, but criminals are regularly trying their luck in the area.
The intruder aside, and without load shedding, and being vigilant in case of criminals, it’s not that different than my 2 years I spent in Cork in Ireland where there was the occasional violence incidents with chavs and several water outages.
If I was living in a township (inhabited by those living well below a middle class wage) my experience would be quite different, probably lots more crime and I expect water and electricity to be quite spotty.
How will things be 10, 20 or 30 years from now?
My biggest worry right now is the water supply, but it’s more a worry of inconvenience of it being turned off regularly to manage demand. I’m expecting within 5 years they’ll have addressed it. Basically it’s a repeat of the electricity capacity shortage issue of the past, despite people telling government for over a decade they need to increase infrastructure to meet expanding demand, they do nothing until they run out.
Otherwise, I’m optimistic things will improve overall, not get worse. I think our democracy is maturing. The ANC which has managed to stay in power since the first democratic elections in ‘94 has been progressively losing voter share, it seems the masses are finally saying no to their excessive corruption and incompetence.
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