The paradox of the tourist is fascinating. All at the same time, a locality experiencing a flood of tourism will welcome the sudden wellspring of foreign currency pouring forth from the rock, and loathe the disruption the flood causes to the steady pace of life. Anyone who has been a tourist knows what the tourist wants, a break from the monotony of their own culture, a desire to know the other and tread in their footsteps, in some cases a wholesome longing to break down cultural barriers and prejudice. And yet anyone who has been on the other side of the interaction with a tourist feels the heady mix of emotions that comes with the experience of being the toured. The discomfort that comes from the wall being torn down unexpectedly. The inconvenience of disruption in routine. No tourist wants to do harm, but even the most sensitive and well-meaning tourist creates a breach in routine that is disruptive. Nobody likes change.

If you want an editor with the same core as Notepad++, but fewer batteries included and more extensibility, Textadept is worth a look.

Mouse interfaces can be incredibly information dense because mice are both incredibly economic from a space and motion standpoint, and also somehow incredibly precise. You can flick your wrist to select any target the size of a grain of rice on a 32" screen. Touch interfaces require larger targets because fingertips are larger than a cursor point, and also require smaller screens because your arm now has to move the entire length of the screen, which is slow and tiring.

Where touchscreens excel is tactile experiences, things that mice cannot replicate. Multi-touch, pressure sensitivity, pen angle. Sweeping motions are difficult to control with a mouse. Manipulating multiple analog controls is nigh-impossible with a mouse.

When an app tries to accommodate both input styles, it inevitably ends up catering to one style or the other, unless two separate interfaces are built. And because a touchscreen laptop can be touched or have the mouse moved at any given time, it's not really possible to switch between the two input styles seamlessly.

I would really enjoy having a device that is capable of both, since the iPad has a gorgeous screen, a great form factor, and a lot of killer uses. But it can't cannibalize mouse interfaces or we wind up with the direction that MacOS is going.

There is nothing wrong with having a keyboard connected to a touch device per se, but the gross arm motion required to move between the touchscreen and the keyboard, and the awkward angle the keyboard puts the touchscreen at sort of nukes the usefulness of the touchscreen. And again, jumping in text is the sort of small target action that mice excel at.

  #!/bin/bash
  hex="\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF"
  mac_hex="\\x`printf "$1" | sed 's/:/\\\\x/g'`"
  wol_string="$hex"
  for i in {1..16}
  do
      wol_string+="$mac_hex"
  done
  printf "$wol_string" | nc -u -b -w 1 "$2" 9

https://github.com/libriscv/libloong

For example, some modern Hyundai models require a very expensive ECU reprogramming tool to... release the electronic parking brake. So that you can change brake pads, a job that is normally well within the reach of anyone willing to get their hands dirty. I've seen suburban moms be shocked by how simple it is. And yet some vehicles now require a service at the dealership to change brake pads because they are the only ones who can command a parking brake unlock. What was wrong with the old pull handle or floor pedal parking brakes?

You can't tell me that all the features of an ECU reader couldn't be programmed into a modern head unit. The stereo is already on the CAN bus, why doesn't the stereo just pop up an alert that says e.g. "VSS Malfunction", "Oxygen Sensor Malfunction" instead of the cryptic check engine light requiring a special tool? Why don't our vehicles have a "maintenance mode" built into the head unit that can clear codes and recalibrate injector timings?

Even on early 2000s vehicles, there were usually procedures to do things like reprogramming key fobs by doing arcane things like cycling the key in the ignition 5 times while holding the brake pedal down. Old PCs had beep codes or blinkenlichten to tell you what the problem was when they couldn't POST, the only reason modern vehicles can't do the same is that automakers are looking for new revenue streams amid shrinking margins.

And this is aside from the fact that we have optimized for ease of construction rather than ease of repair, I saw a picture from a mechanic friend who works at a dealership recently, to replace a camshaft actuator on a modern Ford Bronco they had to lift the entire cab off the chassis. While I have seen home mechanics lift a cab a foot or two to access a part, it's well outside the ability of the average person to crane one of the heaviest parts of their vehicle several feet in the air.

Tools dull, and people neglect to sharpen them. Filters clog, and people neglect to clean them. Oil needs to be changed, guitar strings lose their brightness, lightbulbs flicker and die, rooftops gather moss. We live in a world where our possessions require maintenance, and the only solution to that is to have fewer possessions. Some people choose to rent instead of buying because they don't want to deal with property upkeep (which is undoubtedly a bad deal, but one that some choose to make regardless.)

The iPhone that the author mentions gives many tools to silence notifications from apps. The real problem is the social expectation that we are always paying attention, always ready to respond. I had a phone free week last year and now frequently will leave my phone in another room on silent for hours at a time unintentionally. It irritates my friends and my wife when I don't respond to their texts immediately. And it's frustrating that these features are being foisted on us more and more. But ultimately all things require maintenance, including relationships, and ultimately we set the standard of how much we have to give and are willing to put up with.

As far as the watch goes, personally I wear a Casio Tough Solar w/ Waveceptor because in theory they should go decades without needing a battery change or needing me to set the time, unless I travel. The WVA-M640 is reasonably stylish, and G-Shocks are virtually indestructible. As long as they keep changing the rules there's no escaping daylight saving time though.

Science is empirical knowledge and processes which can be transferred, art is gut feeling and subconscious knowledge applied automatically, which can’t be transferred.

Roughly I think this corresponds to how our minds perform cognitive offloading of repeated tasks. New tasks that require instruction following occupy our attention, but the more we do them, the more our minds wire the behavior into our “muscle memory”. Practitioners of the arts (or even the art of science, one might say) have a built a neural network that offloads tasks so that higher cognitive functions can focus on applying those tasks in expert ways.

It’s sort of like when we start out our brains have to bitbang all tasks (muscle movement, speech, etc.) but over time our brains develop their own TCP offloading, or UART peripherals. And you can’t just download a TCP offloading engine, it has to be built into the silicon. Hence why “expert knowledge” isn’t transmissible.

Which is why spaced repetition is an effective learning method. You’re hacking your brain to wire facts into the hardware.