The HTC One smartphone came with a programmable IR port. All you had to do was determine the TV brand (easy if you can see it), then point the top of the phone at the TV pushing the "power" button until it went off. Then you knew you had the right configuration.
I mostly used it for turning volume down in waiting rooms or at bars, but a bar was also where I figured out most of their TVs tend to be set to the same control because they had a few with their sensors in a line where I was sitting and they all went off together while I was programming it.
One of the phone features I miss most, after the 3.5mm jack. Nobody needs to hear loud daytime TV in a waiting room.
N900 had one too, along with an FM transmitter, just in case you wanted to override whatever generic radio station was playing at full volume in the coffee shop
I would be shocked if this doesn’t exist as a small dongle you could plug into your phone directly or operate wirelessly. If you’re someone who already has a few pieces of EDC, maybe it could be stashed on a keychain.
Do you remember the watches? This was a big thing on watches for a short while in the late '90s, and the cool kids were definitely the ones who could flip the wall-mounted TV on and off when the teacher wasn't looking!
Do you ever use them cross-generationally? I had a friend a dozen years my junior stop talking to me because I used a winking face when I wanted to make it clear I was kidding and he thought I was flirting with him. Never mind that we'd been friends for years and there had never, ever been a hint of interest between us. He insisted I should have known that's what it "always" means, never mind that I was using emoticons in AIM when he was in diapers.
This doesn't feel much different than words. There was a whole ordeal at Microsoft when an intern said an event was going to be "lit" and a bunch of older generation folk assumed that meant drugs.
Language changes all the time, emoji are just part of that.
This wasn't cheeky so much as self-deprecating enough that it was important to clarify I didn't actually mean it seriously. It would've sounded pretty dark otherwise.
I just use Logseq and put double brackets around my key terms. Whenever I need to revisit a topic, I can quickly review what I've a already learned about it, when, and what else it was connected to.
My understanding is that Obsidian is pretty similar? The point of my PKM isn't to turn my notes into shipped things. The point of my PKM is that when I do want to work on something, I don't have to repeat all my old mistakes to get back to where I was before, or reinvent all my own wheels.
Totally get that — that’s a great PKM goal: not “ship from notes”, but “don’t re-derive everything from scratch next time”.
And yes, Logseq/Obsidian-style wikilinks are really good at building that personal context graph. The thing I’m trying to validate isn’t “everyone should convert notes into tasks”, it’s whether there’s a subset of people who also want help with re-entry when they do decide to work on something: resurfacing the few most relevant past notes/links/emails/posts for the current project, in a way that stays lightweight and doesn’t require changing their PKM.
For your workflow, what’s the ideal re-entry experience when you pick up a topic again:
1. a “brief” that consolidates what you previously learned (with links back), or
2. just fast navigation/recall via links and search (no consolidation), or
3. something else entirely?
Details in my HN profile/bio if you’re curious what I’m validating.
At the bottom of each Logseq page, there's a "Linked References" section that just lists every use of that page tag in reverse chronological order. I can collapse any heading if I want. I can review it very quickly and find out what I thought was important last time I was working on that topic. I can also filter by other tags so I can narrow it down to "[[this tag]] and also [[this other tag]]" if my interest is something specific.
Works great for my purposes. Doesn't need any improvement for my use.
Yep, that matches my experience. Logseq’s block tree gives you “structure by default” (parent/child context), so you can get away with being a bit looser with explicit linking. In Obsidian, because the unit is the note (not the block), you often have to be more intentional about creating/maintaining the links and structure.
Out of curiosity: do you find Logseq’s block hierarchy alone is enough for re-entry, or do you still rely heavily on consistent wikilink naming/tags to avoid the “I swear I linked this but used a different term” problem?
Details in my HN profile/bio if you want the angle I’m exploring around minimizing organization overhead while improving re-entry.
Yes the block hierarchy is enough for re-entry. There is a natural 'pruning' process where I return to notes and realise I need to rework them to make surfacing the information I need easier. I often adjust titles and aliases (and often find I have two notes with similar names that need 'refactoring' to one - but Logseq makes this easy). If I don't find the note straight away I can usually remember adjacent terms to find it, and then when I do, I tag it with the first terms I searched on (as acceptance of the associations my brain had naturally made). I'll keep an eye on your project. What I do struggle with with Logseq is there isn't an easy means to just dump ideas to organise later, partly because the mobile app is so slow. It really needs two UIs that integrate with the same base format for two different modes of note collection. I disagree with others that taking or 'hoarding' notes is more work than its worth. The benefit of being able to dump info quickly and pick it up again and being able to find it easily is so valuable. Sure some notes get written and never see the light of day again, but then they never consume further time because I just don't work on them, but they are there if I need them. There's no way to know what info will definitely be useful in the future.
They don't pay the benefits directly. They pay a tax rate based on how many people who file for unemployment benefits are determined to be eligible for them.
> Remember when you could text Dave from the office to turn your PC on because you were stuck in traffic?
I don't understand why this doesn't still work. If Dave from the office has access to your PC, presumably Dave and your PC are in the office, connected to your office's network, and thus it would appear that you are in the office?
Or is the assumption that you're carrying another device with you that would give you away? In which case, shouldn't the complaint be more about being forced to perform some kind of work task (like carrying/being accessible by your phone) when you're off the clock...which is hardly a new issue/complaint?
This doesn't answer the question, though. If Dave could cover for you before, whether your computer was a desktop or laptop, it'd have to be at the office. This way...it still would.
There are lots of places that are "desirable" to a large-enough-to-be-relevant portion of the population, but not as large a portion as the portion of the population that wants to be doctors. And they may like living there for reasons that someone who is drawn to a career in medicine might be unlikely to share.
Do you hear how this reads? It reads like you're not going to take warnings about the dangers of government power seriously because the people espousing them are trying to use government power dangerously themselves.
If you can't see the irony in that, that their warnings are twice as important if the pool of potential abusers if government power is twice as big, then nobody's really losing anything when you opt out of engaging these people.
Am I missing something? My only options on that site appear to be to watch a video or log in. I can't even read about what the thing does, or why I should care about it.
Others mention you must still register with a phone, although you can remove it from your account after you go through the username stuff? Usually HN is pretty good about identifying that the default path is the path and that opt-out like behavior of this means very little for mass usage.
It's not that you can remove it from your account entirely. Your account is still linked to that number. It's that you can remove the number from contact discovery.
And re: defaults the default behavior on signal is that your phone number is hidden from other users but it can be used to do contact discovery. Notably though you can turn contact discovery off (albeit few people do).
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