Obsidian has a plug in for this… here is an announcement from the plugin author: https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1bsa6dy/alpha_release_of_my_handwriting_plugin_ink/ (sorry for a reddit link)

Switched from Onenote to obsidian. There was a small learning curve and I had to install some plugins, but I love it. It looks amazing and runs so much faster than OneNote ever did.

It seems like the most significant new feature is called anti-gravity which is kind of an allow list?

We’ve had white lists for a long time so I’m not exactly sure how this will impact the system. That being said I read through the release notes and there are a lot of changes and improvements throughout the system, so congrats to them team on the 6 release.

I’ve had pihole running on my home network for years and I love it.

I think it’s funny because it’s true. Long form written communication used to convey a lot more subtlety than just its content. It’s a tradition that we will lose a bit like other formalities because it no longer tells you useful information about the sender.

I’m not completely sure if the post you replied to was sincere based on its tone but appreciate your well reasoned comprehensive analysis.

Smart move by the new owner, anything else would have looked out of touch

The smart ones all know how to use VPNs as well. They know what’s up.

Crazy thing is they only need to control the masses who are mostly uneducated or don’t care enough to figure out what’s going on. Turns out that even the USA has a massive group of the latter type.

Accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake on repeat when on a wide open road.

Some drivers do this seemingly without being aware and once you notice it’s impossible to ignore how irritating the feeling is.

I guess this device needed to connect to some remotely hosted server that enabled its functionality. And the company was losing money and hoping that sales would eventually pick up enough to make them profitable. But their latest investor decided not to put any more money in, and the company ran out of cash and can’t pay its bills anymore.

The entrepreneur thought he could get more investor cash and ran the business in such a way that it would fall off a cliff if he didn’t. And… He failed to secure more financing.

I have mixed feelings about products like this… If the device somehow needed to host an entire internet’s worth of data to function, it certainly wouldn’t have cost only $800. But when you buy a product that depends on the ongoing viability of the seller, you’re in a position of caveat emptor - You better vet them out yourself, especially if they’re new.

Hopefully the founders feel some emotional attachment to their product and the trust bestowed upon them by their unknowing customers, and release whatever on the back end makes the thing work so that motivated customers could reactivate their devices somehow.

Hah, I installed Postiz just yesterday, interesting to see this thread. It’s like buffer or one of the other paid tools to schedule your social media posts and track engagement. Of course, of particular interest to our community, Postiz is self hosted.

It doesn’t have as many features yet as the major SaaS businesses, but the software is looking good and quite usable right now. I’m sure the more people who use it and support the developer, the more this tool can grow.

For example you can plug in your OpenAI API key and get an LLM chat interface inside the software while writing social posts. But I don’t think it learns your style or creates posts using any kind of system prompt yet unless you type it in each time.

Another thing I couldn’t figure out so far is how to limit which social media channels individual users can see. For example my business has several different units and there’s a different marketing team on each unit, so they shouldn’t be able to post into other channels.

If you’re in the business of needing to post regularly on a lot of channels I think postiz is worth checking out.

Training takes more resources.

Querying takes less resources.

The factory gets paid in step #1 (many can accept direct wire transfers or have Hong Kong/Singapore/ or even New York banks). Sometimes a deposit is made to start an order and the final amount is paid to release it from the factory after inspection.

There are agents who can handle funds on your behalf and when you work with a new factory or it is a super large order, it is common to use a service that will escrow the funds until the goods have been inspected and released.

Sometimes we even have our own staff monitor the assembly and packaging inside the factory to be sure the quality of parts we ordered are actually going into each piece. This is normal every day in Chinese factories, they know the game.

Here’s how tariffs work (I import stuff from china)

1. I find a Chinese manufacturer of widgets and negotiate with them. One of their first questions is, what incoterms do I require? I tell them EXW which makes their quotation the easiest to provide.

EXW means that once the goods are ready, I’ll send my shipping agent to go get them and bring them to me in my country.

2. I call my agent and tell them to get the goods. They ask a lot of questions about the contents of the goods and figure out which HS code to use, which is a classification of what the goods are (such as bicycle tires, or unfinished lumber, or whatever).

3. The agent prepares an assload of documentation for my shipment. They send a truck to the Chinese warehouse, get the stuff, load it into a container, take it to a shipyard. It’s loaded, boat moves to the US, boat is then unloaded, and my container is put into an inspection queue.

4. The shipping agent forwards the documents about my container, which has not been released, to US customs. US customers decides if they want to manually inspect it or not, and then issues an invoice for the taxes. My agent calls me and says Mr. Nucleative, your customs bill is $9,845.50.

I pay them, they pay the US customs office. Customs releases my container.

5. The truck is cleared to pick up my container and drive it to my warehouse.

6. Now I unload and sell the goods to my customers.

Did you notice in step #4 that I paid the import tariffs? Now my cost to get the goods to my customers went way up. My margins are pretty thin, so I can’t do this business unless I charge my customers more or else I’m running a charity. Now, my customers have to pay me more. That money goes straight to the US government.

Hypothetically now it’s less unattractive to set up a factory in the USA, encouraging more local jobs. But damn, did you know we also need to import rubber, and metal, and machine parts, and cardboard for packaging, and all the other raw supplies either way? The local factories, if there are any, can probably not increase production to meet demand anyways, at least not in a month or two. Does anybody remember what happend when demand outstrips supply?

There is no rocket science here, just people learning from the wrong people.

Not all imported goods are made with unfair labor practices.

Get a supported version of Linux on there, give it a static IP on your LAN, install Pihole by following the guide at

https://pi-hole.net/

Update the DNS ip that your router gives out to the IP of your netbook, and voilà, most ads can’t load any more.

Even mobile phone apps that have ads won’t show the ads when you’re connected through your home network.

Pihole

I too have a nearly perfect replica of this piece. I’m selling each piece, which is part of an extremely limited run of 1000 pieces in total produced this week on demand, signed and sealed in a Tupperware container for freshness, for $2,990 each, worldwide shipping is just another $299.

The buyer of chrome could make bing the default search engine and re-enable whatever broke Ublock origin (the ad blocker)

They could also cripple gapps and gmail a bit. It would also be harder for google to unilaterally develop new web standards.

That would no doubt consternate a few at Google and knee cap them forcing web shit down our throats that only improves their ad business.

Me too but here’s one useful function:

Perhaps you are aware there is an ongoing event, say for example a football game, or an election, or an outage of your email service provider. You go to one of these “scream into the void” social sites, search on the topic, and learn what people are saying about it. Maybe someone knows what’s really going on, maybe some of those people have some interesting insights and you engage with them, not unlike you and I are engaging right now. Others can observe, perhaps contribute, and after the event has concluded, everyone goes their own way. Hopefully in the end the interactions are beneficial for all.

Those kind of things have to be done in every single district and costs millions of dollars. Unless there’s a probable chance, it’s probably better to save the cash and use it for something that could get results in the future