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This is pretty dope, but I'm terrified about the fact that Firefox lets it take over Ctrl+L, Ctrl+1, or any other way (that I can find, at least) of breaking out of Vim with a keyboard aside from closing the tab with Ctrl+W - which is even more terrifying since I use that in Vim a ton, too :O

...but this is pretty cool :D


The actual issue is that Windows and Linux don't properly use a ‘super’ key―while the ‘Win’ key is sitting there uselessly.

Ironically, MS' own ‘ergonomic’ (cough) keyboards have gigantic Win keys, right under the thumbs which are the strongest digits. These keys are great to use on Mac, it's an eye-opener as to how the historical keyboard mutations ended up in just the wrong way for two platforms (and for Emacs).

I could also say some things about the nonsensical shape of keyboards and the moronic replication of the typewriters' staggered key layout...


> The actual issue is that Windows and Linux don't properly use a ‘super’ key―while the ‘Win’ key is sitting there uselessly.

Some people do use the super key. I have it bound to a huge number of actions (WASD to switch workspaces, Alt+WASD to move window to adjacent workspaces, C to close window, X to pause/unpause media, Z to show workspace overview, tab to switch between workspaces like alt-tab does for windows, P and ; to invert colors, F and T to control window tiling, / to bring up the dropdown terminal, and the 4x4 grid from '6' to '.' to go to one of my 16 workspaces).

It would be a shame if applications started using 'super' in their keybindings - having a key that is effectively globally reserved for user-configurable actions is very useful. There are no worries about conflicting keybindings when you use super; the same cannot be said of keybindings that use ctrl or even ctrl+alt+letter - for example, many IDEs use ctrl+alt+letter to do stuff, which would mess with global user-configured shortcuts. Perhaps the position could be optimized though.


In both i3wm and awesomewm I use super as my main modifier for window management. I am also glad programs don't often touch it so that it's available for this.


> There are no worries about conflicting keybindings when you use super

Aren't there conflicts on most desktops?

- Windows, off the top of my head, has Win+R, Win+C, Win+V, Win+x, Win+D, Win+L, Win+E, Win+Directions - Linux (well Ubuntu/Gnome3) has Win+L, Win+R, Win+Mouse, Win+Directions - macOS (considering Ctrl to be super here) has Ctrl+Arrows, along with many common Ctrl+Letters from the unix world


On Windows you can't do anything with super (AFAIK); you are stuck with what Microsoft provides you and that's it.

Most Linux desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, etc.) provide default mappings that involve super, but they can all be changed freely by the user. So you can get rid of Win+L or change what it does (at least on KDE, or if you are using just a WM like i3).

macOS is just weird, with the cmd/ctrl split.


>The actual issue is that Windows and Linux don't properly use a ‘super’ key―while the ‘Win’ key is sitting there uselessly.

>These keys are great to use on Mac

The use of the super key on Mac is horrible. It should sit there uselessly, until I tell it to do otherwise. On Mac, here are no safe hotkeys to bind anything to. On Linux, my WM configuration has a ton of actions bound to the super key, and I never have to worry that it will conflict with another application.


I’d love to hear your take on the nonsensical shape and staggered key layout. Do you have suggestions for keyboards that do away with this?

I have myself been looking at https://ergodox-ez.com/ but I’d love to hear of alternatives, especially if you have first hand experience on them.


Hi, I have experience both with the ergodox and the now-discontinued Truly Ergonomic Computer Keyboard™. The TECK honestly has a slightly better layout for me - the two halves are closer together and seem to fit my hands just a bit better. On the downside, the TECK's hardware quality was atrocious with keys double-pressing or missing presses after about a year of use. It also uses its own microcontroller with its own closed-source firmware so there's nearly no community around it. I'm not sure I can politely explain just how much the TECK fails.

The ErgoDox on the other hand has been a joy to use for approximately a year now and its design allowing for wasy swapping of keyswitches plus its open-source firmware mean I have limitless customisability and am not stuck using low-quality chinese cherry-mx clones (kailh). I hear they've actually improved now, but the ones in the TECK were definitely subpar.

I use a split ortholinear keyboard because a standard layout keyboard makes my fingers hurt after a while. ErgoDox and TECK(while it worked) were both good enough for mitigating my problems while not being as exotic and unwieldy as a kinesis.

I would love to try out a https://shop.keyboard.io/ once (hopefully) the price comes down a bit.


As an avid mechanical keyboard hobbyist with an enormous collection of MX variants (I have 10 ortholinear keyboards in various stages of construction in my living room right now, and about 80 models of switches from various manufacturers), I would argue that kailh had surpassed cherry in quality and selection by a wide margin in recent years. You really should give them another try.


> I’d love to hear your take

Well, I guess you already noticed that regular keyboards are made for people with arms growing from the front of their chests. Some, like MS, now generously provide some angle between the halves so people with shoulder-mounted arms can curve them in more comfortably without keeping the wrists crooked.

Now, let's take the flat profile, specifically crosswise the keyboard. It seems greatly suited for people with digits extendable in the plane of the wrist. But where I am, fingers mostly rotate on joints instead.

While we're here, feeble attempts at wrist support on most current boards don't have much respect from me. MS at least made the board incline the other way, which is vastly better (though I'd like some forearm support now).

As for the staggered key layout, it works sort of okay for the left hand where the key columns are staggered to the right (going away from the user). Now, which way are they staggered under the right hand? Also to the right. Meanwhile my fingers mostly move forward and backward in line with each forearm, so I'd imagine ortholinear layout to be more reasonable.

Kinesis Advantage and Maltron boards seem to get all of this right, but I'm yet to buy one.

I'm not sure about the next point, but apparently in the ‘palms down’ position the bones in the forearm are rotated DNA-style, which may or may not be suboptimal. Some boards, like Kinesis Freestyle, can be mounted in a vertical accordion-arrangement, and there are also mice that are handled like joysticks.

The sad thing is, while plastic boards could probably be manufactured in any shape you'd like (at least other gadgets don't seem to have a big problem), prevailing designs are seemingly dictated by the inertia of the market instead of the ergonomics, so they still hold on to ideas of typewriter design from a century ago. And better designs are caught in the bog of higher prices because no mass production for these weird things.


> okay for the left hand where the key columns are staggered to the right

Got this one backwards on the phone. It's to the left, under both hands.


I've been using the Ergodox EZ for over a year now and it is life-changing. The ergonomic benefits are huge and it forces you to learn to touch type properly.

I went through 20 iterations to find a layout optimised for using Vim in Ubuntu - feel free to check it out.

https://github.com/Ganon-M/ergodox-vim-ubuntu


I'd like to second the sentiment. My only complaint about my new job is that I can't bring my Ergodox (we have strict security requirements on external hardware due to handling sensitive medical data). At my last job, I used it every day for about a year. It's an absolute dream come true.


I have a Kinesis Advantage.

Cons: it's a bit expensive, considerably bulky and annoyingly (for workmates) noisy since it has a big volume of air between the halves of the keyboard; it's overkill for most situations where you're going to be browsing an watching Netflix.

Pros: it looks like a fucking spaceship (I'm not a habitual use of F-bombs), teaches you proper typing by separating the keys you're supposed to press with the left and right hands (this lives on even when you work with other keyboards); has such a long key travel that your hands don't hurt when typing in a hurry/hammering the keys with intensity, but actually fires before half of that travel, which makes typing certain combinations with pinkies and ringfingers easy and comfortable.

It's a great keyboard, but it's too much for most people methinks.

---

Edit: from the pictures the Ergodox is very close to a non-bulky kinesis except for the concave bowl design of the keyboard halves; it's great for resting your hands and arms solidly. But I have an unused Kinesis at home because it doesn't fit my desk concept; this would fit the bill nicely.


> The actual issue is that Windows and Linux don't properly use a ‘super’ key―while the ‘Win’ key is sitting there uselessly.

For me (Gnome) the super-key shows an overview of my windows and let's me enter a command which is fairly convenient.


This is a problem. The browser wants to be a computing platform, so it's injecting itself between the actual OS and the software you'd like to run. But it's still an userland program, so it uses regular keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts the software you'd like to run needs as well.

I had a similar problems with Emacs in the browser (I stumbled upon it a long time ago). The keys I needed the most were also the keys intercepted by the browser.


Here's hoping you do the same for your login form! :D


I wonder if these people are aware that they didn't need to write a Reddit clone?

Why would you write a Reddit clone in PHP when Reddit itself is a perfectly fine open source Python project? Is their license not permissive enough?

https://github.com/reddit/reddit


Reddit just recently announced they're no longer open source [1]. The last source dump could still be used, but I think they choose not to just out of a statement that they're against the Reddit corporation.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6xh3xp/reddits...


Reddit is kind of a pain to run at small scale because it has so many dependences: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/Dependencies.


The authors of Raddit tried that, but found that actually running Reddit's software, especially on low-end hardware for a smaller community, was a pain in the arse and decided it'd be easier to build their own that fit their purposes.


If they wanted to use Python, they probably would have forked it. Not everyone thinks python is good.


That's not the complete source code. Some parts are kept secret such as the voting algorithm.


Reddit is not released under a free software license.


I was wondering the same thing


...or you start looking out for it :)


Hopefully it isn't intentional to suggest that you need to be a genius "guy" to do this. To be fair, this is about where I closed the article so maybe I missed the point.


The actual sentence is:

> You probably have to be one of those genius guys ...

Used in the plural, 'guys' usually just means 'people'/'folks' - "alright guys, shall we get going?" - Mac Dictionary agrees.

Happy people don't go around looking to be insulted.


It's entirely orthogonal, but the other half of that, the implication you have to be a “genius” to write a compiler, also annoys me. Is it really rocket science?

(I suppose it depends on what “real” means, though.)


Seriously, though, if you are going to post the following thing in your article then just reconsider:

"Warning: the following section involves googling usernames and reading the first page of results for the people involved. This may be unethical. I apologize in advance."

Obviously your apology means nothing if you are doing it anyway.


I don't see this anywhere in the linked article. What am I missing?


It's written to run Python 2.7 because these problems are largely solved in Python 3, and needs solved for people on Python 2.x versions.

"Upgrade to Python3" is the usual defense to that, but it's not really practical for large companies with software such as YouTube completely written in Python 2.x.


No, its written to support 2.7 because the majority of Google's code they want to over haul is in 2.7. I don't think much of this is fixed by python3, at the very least the speed benefits you get don't even compare. See the graph on the OP comparing # of threads using CPython and Grumpy


How is it not practical to upgrade to Python 3, yet it is practical to rewrite in Go?


BlackBox: A website designed to stimulate seizures


I'd love to see the design brief just to see if that was the goal from the start or they just wound up there after playing on a SNES emulator or something. It's a crazy aesthetic, but a very pleasing sort of crazy in an overpowering way.


Relevant to this one too ;P http://blackboxpuzzles.com/


I doubt it? The site still requires you to click a button (which would be inside the iframe) before it will search for you. Also, are iframes able to use `window.open`?


Same here. WTF did I do?!


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