Yes, Dick has been a nickname for Richard for about 800 years but only got its modern slang meaning in probably late-19th or early 20th century. It seems to have come out of the British military from the phrase "Tom, Dick, and Harry", which were such common names that the phrase meant every ordinary man. (Tommy was already slang for "British soldier".) And from there, one more evolutionary step for mankind....
Would a bit of Post-It Note (for minimal adhesion) damage the screen coating if left on most of the time? Would even that much thickness stress the screen when opened and closed thousands of times? Is there a better (self-service) material?
I’ve used one for years on various MacBooks and it’s very effective. The paper is very thin so it causes no real mechanical stress and also opaque, so all the camera sees is a field the color of that paper.
There’s been no damage to the screen from the adhesive although occasionally I’ve had to clean the residual adhesive with 70% IPA, but nothing worse than the typical grime that most laptop monitors pick up.
Plastic slide covers that stick on are pretty cheap if your laptop doesn't already have one. I also think that the open microphone issue is a greater problem, especially with the current ability of speech-to-text, but what you utter may not be as important as being seen "doing a Toobin" during an online meeting. YMMV :) (I won't expand that acronym!)
> Would a bit of Post-It Note (for minimal adhesion) damage the screen coating if left on most of the time?
Possible, I have one IPS monitor with a spot on screen where the color is pale. I had a post-it note there and I guess something bad happened when I tore it off.
I used electrical pvc tape for many years on my macbooks, no damage but I got tired of them leaving glue residue. Switched to post-its about 10 years ago, works perfectly.
I've never tried them on a matte or coated screen though.
Ah, I thought your name sounded familiar! In 2008, I bought "Reading Japanese with a Smile" on a trip to Japan and loved it. It was very well done and perfect for me. I ended up buying two copies and for years I kept checking on Kinokuniya visits hoping it would become a series. No such luck, but my guess is it was just too much work for too little reward. But you should know that a HN reader still remembers your work fondly after 16 years.
Thank you for the kind words! I am glad to hear that you found that book useful.
The editor and I did discuss a sequel and I started collecting material for it, but I had changed careers by that point and no longer had the time or motivation to see it through to completion. And now I’m not sure if there’s a market for such books anymore. At least, if I were learning to read Japanese myself now, rather than buying a book of annotated readings I would choose my own texts and ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini about the parts I don’t understand.
It's a little sad, but you're right of course that many books no longer make business sense now that everything they offer is online and free. Well, when the AIs put us all out of business and we're home all day in our rabbit hutches, we'll have plenty of time and free content to read.
Is this for the paid version? I'm using the free version, and it hasn't asked me for a phone number, but if the paid version requires a phone number, my reaction would be the same as yours: sorry, no.
I would love to see kids given the materials and taught how to build makeshift emergency radios in science class every couple of years. Then they could take them home, stick them in a closet or drawer somewhere, and in case of emergency, they would be everywhere.
Now that is thoughtful, and I think, can open the conversation to youth what if, and of what to do in case of... I know as a kid we had Civil Defense, and that funny little CD symbol on the AM dial...
Does Apple charge 15% for each dollar up to a million plus 30% for each dollar above a million, or when you cross a million (in a year), do they suddenly jump to 30% of everything? IOW, if I have earned $999,999 so far this year, I have to pay Apple about $150,000. If I then make another $1 sale, do I owe a few cents more or another $150,000?
And once your rate goes to 30%, does it stay there the following year, or does the whole system reset to zero each year?
15 percent on the first million in a year 30% for everything after.
Subscriptions are 15% for renewals (and maybe for all subs).
If your pulling in more than a few million a year from apple, and your not "gaming" or gaming the system I hear they are fairly open to negotiate. YMMV
I understand that some businesses might want to take the hit from a cost surge because they get an even higher revenue surge. But a large fraction of sites aren't like that and would prefer a loss of service to a cost overrun. Service providers should always offer a "maximum out-of-pocket cost" service option. Those that don't aren't suitable vendors for most customers and customers should be warned about them.
I'd like the same but with one more deployment option: create a (simple) static site that doesn't require any web server. I started an old relative on Dreamweaver about 25 years ago thinking that simple HTML files would make a good, open, archival rich-text alternative to plaintext. He wrote many articles that can still be double-clicked and viewed on any platform today and are among the most likely doc formats to still be readable a century from now (if any still are).
I had hoped that simple HTML would become a better choice than PDF or MS-Word for ordinary people writing for posterity, but unlike old Dreamweaver, almost all HTML tools today produce docs that must be served by a web server (and consist of separate HTML, CSS, JS, img files that get scattered.)
Yes - this is what I’m aiming for. For example; I’m imagining an “article” is just a folder with HTML, with images & media within it - a self contained doc which ought to be usable for decades.
I completely agree. The wonderful speed of the compiler allows for quick small-change, test, small-change, test development. In theory. They then sabotage it by making "unused" warnings into errors, which forces you to waste the time the fast compiler could have saved, making temporary changes (ex: commenting out/in) that aren't needed for the test and won't be needed for production.
