Content roundup #3

What's that?

Two different kind of media content? In a single post?

No way!

Typed

Someone called Franck from China is building a drop-in replacement motherboard for the ThinkPad X200, one of the best models alongside the X230.

You can configure it up to silly powerful specs like a top-of-the-line Intel Ultra 9 CPU and 128GB of RAM: considering the X200 shipped with a Core 2 Duo processor, this is quite the upgrade!

As much as I'm a fan of sleeper builds like these (I daily drove a maxed out X61s for 1 year in 2016, and was about to buy an X62 board), the most prominent issue with them is the lackluster BIOS.

Modern laptops defer as much as possible to the firmware to relieve kernel developers from the burden of re-implementing things like suspend/resume, optimized power saving settings and so on.

It's not uncommon to read horror stories about laptops with great hardware and awful firmware, I can't imagine an aftermarket motherboard like this to be much better.

I prefer writing on paper with my hacked pen, the appeal of an e-Ink note-taking device like the Remarkable always intrigued me (see next section).

They also run Linux and are kind of hackable, this post is an interesting deep dive into how homebrew firmware draws on the screen, sometimes bypassing the native (closed-source) software.

Hacking on the reMarkable 2

steen's online burrow

This is something I'd like to introduce at work: stop everything for a month/couple of weeks and just get the tickets marked as bugs down to the lowest number possible.

I'm not sure I can make the gamification thing happen, but I'm sure as heck organizing a fixit would be great for the soul (and our bonuses).

We stopped roadmap work for a week and fixed 189 bugs

Discussed on Hacker News, lobste.rs and r/programming It’s Friday at 4pm. I’ve just closed my 12th bug of the week. My brain is completely fried. And I’m staring at the bug leaderboard, genuinely sad that Monday means going back to regular work. Which is weird because I love regular work. But fixit weeks have a special place in my heart. What’s a fixit, you ask? Once a quarter or so, my org with ~45 software engineers stops all regular work for a week. That means no roadmap work, no design work, no meetings or standups. Instead, we fix the small things that have been annoying us and our users: an error message that’s been unclear for two years a weird glitch when the user scrolls and zooms at the same time a test which runs slower than it should, slowing down CI for everyone The rules are simple: 1) no bug should take over 2 days and 2) all work should focus on either small end-user bugs/features or developer productivity.

I did not have a chance to play with BlackberryOS 10 back in the day, from afar it seemed like the mobile OS of the future: real multitasking, a rock solid UNIX-like kernel, cool UI/UX, and even a hardware keyboard in later models.

Too bad iOS and Android wiped the floor with it driving it out of the market, as customers at the time were not really interested in a value-oriented product, focusing more on app quantity and not quality.

BB10 rants aside, someone is building a new mobile UI environment for Linux/ Postmarket OS heavily inspired by Blackberry's late works but backed by the open-source community and an arguably better low-level stack.

Marathon OS - Gesture-First Mobile Linux

Inspired by what made BB10 legendary. Built for today. A gesture-first mobile OS on Linux with The Hub, Active Frames, and modern UX.

Clipped

Turns out there's a genre of YouTube videos that focuses on camping when it's raining outside.

The almighty algorithm sent my way a slightly different variant: a guy camping in his camper-converted van, under the rain.

It's almost ASMR.

Turns out Walmart knows how to build a proper mountain bike on the cheap!

Most people don't need a 170mm front, 170mm rear travel monster enduro bike, a capable trail will take care of 99% of their riding: Walmart is aiming straight at them with their new MTB offering.

It's interesting seeing large brands like Polygon not able to match it spec for spec, an indication the market is about to change for the better in my opinion: stop overcharging customers for things they don't need, focus on delivering affordable bikes for the masses!

7 minutes of pure trail riding bliss on a rigid mountain bike!

Besides the skills requires to ride the North Shore with no suspension, I'm amazed at how silent the bike Jeff rides is.

Seeing the original Dream Theater drummer playing one of their most loved tracks is a bliss, especially if in a raw, unedited single take!

The Remarkable hacking post made me curious about the state of e-Ink note-taking devices.

The general consensus is:

Remarkable leads the mainstream adoption of these devices but their software is limited and requires a subscription service for most interesting features.

Chinese companies like BOOX or BigMe push the category forward with screens that almost feel like standard LCDs, too bad long-term support is nonexistent.

Supernote... focuses on quality, despite using dated hardware.

While on paper Supernote devices look like outdated piece of hardware, they prefer focusing on software quality and features while providing upgradeable hardware.

This review highlights some of the great features Supernote built for the Nomad, a more portable e-Ink note-taking gadget - my favorite one is the "circle to headline" thingy, plus the ability to link other notes based on them.

I'll probably pick one up in the future: translucent back and Lamy Safari of course!