a.k.a. the most recent stable LTS, which will be succeeded by 26.04.1. Unless your hardware doesn't work on 24.04.4, I would not upgrade to 26.04 yet, unless you enjoy unexpected behavior in the console.
Gboard has been messing with the emoji search recently. It is worse.
Previously, if you type "fac" or "face" or "facep" or "facepa" or "palm" in the search box, you'd get the facepalm emoji among the results. Inexplicably, now the lying emoji, bacon, fondue are shown when you type "fac" but not the classic facepalm. It is only after you type "facepal" that the facepalm emoji appears in the results, which is a major... facepalm for the Gboard team.
As a parent, I need to _constantly_ send the facepalm emoji to my partner, so I noticed immediately when it recently changed. I think they're now trying to account for multiple languages, misspellings, a larger list of synonyms that allows partial matches, sentiment/meaning/synonyms, etc. In any case, I've always felt like emojis should be weighted by overall usage patterns (I have never used the fondue emoji and don't know anyone who does) and now they need a better search trie, where the facepalm emoji is in the top results of "fac".
Shopify (admin.shopify.com, help.shopify.com) was down for fifteen minutes today. shopifystatus.com showed it was "All systems operational" but for users "having trouble" click a link to contact support. That link? Hosted on help.shopify.com of course...
I find a much more enjoyable interface after disabling animations on every device I use---as well as shadows, glow, blur, translucency, hover effects, and rounded corners. Eye candy is an annoyance and wastes developer time, in practice, even when done "correctly".
Kinetic scrolling on touchscreens can stay, but only because my finger doesn't have a no-friction scroll wheel.
I wish I could fully agree. Canonical is a bit pushy: "Ubuntu Pro / ESM subscription will make your machine safer! and it is convenient mega free!! ((for non-business uses))"
Workplace very strictly requires Ubuntu LTS for toolchain & compatibility reasons, otherwise I'd run Debian or Fedora or Tumbleweed with Ubuntu containers/VMs where needed.
Nonetheless, Linux popups and promotions (even from enterprise distros) are not nearly as bad as the Windows 11 experience.
Fastmail had a UI change a year ago, where they went all "rounded corner" and created unique rows for every message that weren't so easily sorted with Stylus CSS. I emailed them about the changes, and a few weeks later the messages were listed in a way that I could easily apply my own stylesheet again. They also acknowledged on their subreddit the UI change was not incredibly popular (even the CEO was "not enjoying" it) and they took some feedback and provided a few better UX customizations in the options.
At one point, Fastmail had an error parsing Unicode in misconfigured iCal files (Google Calendar showed events correctly) but after a short back-and-forth, they fixed it within a week.
Now, Google Calendar has had a problem with my organization's iCal files for the past four weeks. Submitting a bug report via the help community is very opaque and unhelpful (a la "Have you tried turning if off and on again?"). Fastmail loads the iCal correctly. I have no clue if Google is aware or when they'll ever fix it.
One huge productivity advantage to FM over Gmail? Sort by sender name. (This makes it so easy to bulk apply changes)
Setting up own domain has been straightforward. (It's a bit of work ensuring DNS records have DMARC/DKIM/SPF, but it's all in the FM checklist/documentation.) Setting up Python scripts to auto email me using app passwords has been straightforward. Creating aliases and throwaways is straightforward.
I have not regretted paying for email; specifically, Fastmail.
I've never really needed that, or I don't understand the need for there to be a difference. I typically tile windows into each corner based on how large I need them. When I need more than 4, I'll manually place them.
What I do notice is the wasted space needed by the entire window border to accommodate rounded corners and how annoying it is to grab a window handle in e.g. Ubuntu w/ GNOME because you're clicking/touching where the corner would be (but isn't, because it's round).
I thought having a MacBook Pro after a few decades of Windows/Linux use would be utopic, but Apple hides a ton of keyboard/mouse shortcuts, so the majority of software is slow to learn and use. Simple stuff like split screen, file handling (particularly compressed files, mounts, and network), or USB device permissions leave a lot to be desired.
It gets worse when you need to add Parallels because a particular lab machine only has Windows support. Being Vim-dependent, I got unlucky receiving the butterfly keyboard model with no physical escape key.
excellent hardware specs, superb battery life, very opinionated aesthetic (I hate it.), not nearly as intuitive as one would assume
I keep purchasing ThinkPads (Z13, X1 Gen 11, X1 Gen 12, T16) where the USB-C port breaks within a year (respectively: "no dock or external monitor", "no charge and only non-Thunderbolt enumeration" on a single port, "charge only, no USB enumeration at all" on both ports, "fries other devices during reverse PD"), and I'd love to be able to swap out a broken port rather than ship the entire machine to Poland for two weeks and get lectured by the support contact that, "maybe ports only stop working under Linux but we'll still repair the mainboard this time."
I am waiting to jump ship to a different manufacturer, but nobody is challenging ThinkPad on keyboard quality/layout and Linux support, the two factors where I'm totally unwilling to compromise. (Tuxedo is close but still not the better alternative.)
I think they mean: there is no USB socket on the enclosure containing the AC-DC conversion circuitry, like you'd find on most smartphone charger bricks. The cable (with the USB-C plug on the other end) is attached to the enclosure permanently. Thus, when the plug breaks, you need to throw away the entire power conversion brick. If the converter had a USB socket, not only could you replace the cord when the cord inevitably breaks, you can choose the cord length and whether it has a 90 degree bend and/or magnetic disconnect at the end.
We have probably 10 Thinkpads at the house. Three power bricks have been rendered useless (and four USB-C ports) because Lenovo has set their part selection and engineering design to "best value for the company" rather than "best quality for the end user".
Also, the PD negotiation of the Lenovo bricks is unusual, where it will not provide significant current at the 5 volt base USB power to some non-laptop devices and also not accept fast charging rates from some non-Lenovo chargers: Our ThinkPads will charge using some high-wattage smartphone chargers but not every one of them. Every once in a while we find a device with a USB-C charging port (e.g. baby monitor display) that will charge with any charger around the house but not with the Lenovo laptop charger.
The entire site (including page margins) being a link to HN is an annoyance
edit: also, the autoscroll thing
The Tailwind CSS complaints aren't wrong even today; any time I want to apply a Stylus CSS to fix someone's janky site---particularly, weekly offers from area grocery stores, where I fix it once or twice and enjoy a much better UI for a year or two---and then all I see is class="rounded-lg shadow-primary-400 my-4 md:px-4 bg-white py-20 pt-8 dark:border-gray-600" for every single element... it gets me seriously aggravated! It's a hassle to modify and a hassle to parse. I imagine it's only convenient to write/maintain because you use a separate tool and compile it into the garbage it becomes.
After the 2016 election, my advisor's entire research lab relocated to Europe except for two candidates who were nearly finished with a PhD and got co-advised.
The majority of us who moved became proficient in a foreign language. Some got permanent EU/UK/Swiss residency or even citizenship. This lab continues to attract researchers from the U.S. and then place them mostly into European and Asian universities or businesses. These folks are largely not going back to America short of forceful expulsion via European anti-immigration policy. I know other research group leaders who have done this same thing.
Someone I know in the U.S. has a PhD/grants/awards and wants to stay close to family/home (in a mid-sized city of a Republican-leaning state) yet hasn't been able to find a job or academic position in biological engineering after a few years of actively looking. The longer they work outside of their major, the harder it will be to secure an engineering/academic career later.
For too many in the U.S. (particularly where I grew up; a farm town) politics is a team sport and the hatred of the other team only intensifies as the government invests in higher education and research. They're willfully blind to the fact that cancer treatments, major agricultural advances (crop resilience, production efficiency, genetic modification), smartphones and fast internet access, trucking, and nearly every aspect of their lives which has vastly improved comes from social spending. Instead, it's stickers on gas pumps and chants at NASCAR races. Leftist voters are not as decisive at the voting booth as Republicans, and there's still right-wing momentum in many states across all levels of government, the judicial system, and the leadership of the largest companies.
I firmly disbelieve the U.S. can reverse course even after a decade. In my opinion, it would require immense structural and cultural change: breaking up the two-party system, rejecting money in politics, political/judicial age limits, a major push to disrupt clandestine foreign meddling, shifting the partisan balance of courts in a way that cannot later be weaponized, heavy investment in infrastructure and high-visibility patriotic (ideally non-partisan) programs similar to Eisenhower's, the sort of intense media regulation that would restore local journalism in small towns, paying teachers significantly more plus developing more public trust in the educational system, public research investment, high taxes, strong social programs, a rejection of the propaganda that America is the greatest country in the world; basically a shift toward being more like the countries that actually(*) have a high standard of living.
Who has the power to implement these sweeping changes? Would it be a conflict of their personal interests?
Trace data are sent through a large/fast port (PCIe or 60-pin connector) and captured using fast dedicated hardware at something like 10 GB per second. The trace data are usually compressed and often only need to indicate whether a branch is taken or not taken (TNT packets from x86, Arm has ETM but similar enough trace path) with a little bit of timing, exception/interrupt, and address overhead. The bottleneck is streaming and storing trace data from a hardware debugger (since its internal buffer is usually under half a second at max throughput) although you can further filter by application on Intel processors via CR3 matching. (Regarding the last five years of Apple: I'm not sure you'll find any info on Apple's debuggers and modifications to the Arm architecture. Ever.)
If you encounter a slowdown using RTIT or IPT (the old and new names for hardware trace) it's usually a single-digit percentage. (The sources here are Intel's vague documentation claims plus anecdotes; Magic Trace, Hagen Paul Pfeifer, Andi Kleen, Prelude Research.)
Decoding happens later and is significantly slower, and this is where the article's focus, JIT compilation, might be problematic using hardware trace (as instruction data might change/disappear, plus mapping machine code output to each Java instruction can be tricky).