professed

It really awesome when it comes to reading and annotating PDFs. That’s the main reason I got it — so many e-readers I’ve tried over the years have been horrible for PDF documents and as a professor that’s like 80% of my day. For ePub documents, it’s very capable now — even if that wasn’t the case a few software versions ago. That said, the experience is a bit idiosyncratic among e-reader devices. The Remarkable basically converts the ePub to a static document so that the UI can more or less treat it as a PDF, which is a different user experience than some other e-readers. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s different.

My experience has been very similar. As I say below, "I bought the device because I liked how user-modifiable the software was, but once I had it in hand I found that official development was moving briskly enough with new features and UI improvements that I’ve never really had a reason to mod it."

Here are a few! There was also a whole wiki, RemarkableWiki.com, for a while where users shared technical tips and tricks. It's not up at the moment and I'm not sure if it's down permanently or only temporarily. My experience has been similar to @blusterydayve26@midwest.social — I bought the device because I liked how user-modifiable the software was, but once I had it in hand I found that official development was moving briskly enough with new features and UI improvements that I've never really had a reason to mod it. I have SSH'd into the device to set it up with a few of the trickier WiFi networks in my life, though, and can confirm that it's a breeze.

I love my Remarkable 2. The company has a freemium model for its online services, but the device is lovely on its own and it’s Linux under the hood, with an active modding community delivering cool tweaks.

For better or for worse, Teams is available on Linux, too, so my university feels justified foisting it on everyone regardless of which OS we’re using.

“The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin is maybe the best political sci-fi book I’ve ever read. Cory Doctorow’s “Walkaway” is also quite good and feels a bit like its spiritual successor.

Not lesser known, but maybe under-appreciated. I rewatched “Oblivion” the other evening and enjoyed it. I perused reviews afterward and they all panned the movie for being too long and plodding at two hours, which makes sense I guess. But, honestly, after the subsequent decade of three- and four-hour blockbuster schlock, “Oblivion” now feels like a taut little thriller.

Yes! I recently went to a professional conference for the first time since the Twitter debacle and found that while most of the participants were still tweeting, Mastodon felt like a fun secret society within the meeting. We recognized one another, said hello in the hallways, had conversations that felt like secret handshakes. It emphasized for me the difference between having a community and shouting into the void.

Now, if only I could follow you on Lemmy. lol

For me the benefit of the various mismanagement crises at Twitter and now reddit is that they push enough people to alternatives to create a critical mass there. Mastodon will likely never be what Twitter was, but enough interesting people and enough of my professional network now have a presence on the latter that it's become a viable alternative for me. Same thing here. Whether or not Lemmy ever reaches reddit's proportions, there are enough interesting links and discussions here to keep me occupied. And if not, I could probably stand to spend a bit less time on social media anyhow.

I recently finished Black Rock and the rest of the Eddie Dougherty mystery series by John McFetridge and thought they were really well done. The books have the attention to detail of Michael Connelly police procedurals, but are set in Montreal in the 1970s, starting with the events leading up to the October Crisis, which provide a really fascinating backdrop. The city really becomes its own character.

I had a hard time getting into McFetridge's earlier books, but these are very different and have become some of my favorite mystery novels. I read an interview with him saying that it was a conscious shift in tone.

Agree! This describes my experience exactly. On a related note about format, I thought Jody Avirgan, Five Thirty Eight's podcast producer early on, was a good foil for him, drawing him into conversation and occasionally pushing back on points that sounded wild or tone deaf.

I started using Timeshift when it was included with a distro I was using and haven't had reason to shift away from it. Have already used it once to do a full restore.