• Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    1 hour ago

    Dude, those two little UBS-C ports do 50x what the ports on the bottom laptop could do

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      41 minutes ago

      That’s true and good, but I still want to be able to plug on an HDMI or Ethernet cable without a damn adapter.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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        22 minutes ago

        The laptop may actually be too thin for either. Want those ports? Vote with your money, buy a different laptop.

        As for hdmi at least, you can get a usb-c-ended cable too.

      • otacon239@lemmy.world
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        26 minutes ago

        Thankfully USB-C can handle both of those protocols. Just like with Micro USB and Mini before it, it will just take time until the ecosystem catches up. Just, this time, you can run the entirety of possible data streams through a single port.

        • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de
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          21 minutes ago

          I don’t wanna wait until the system catches up I need to hook up my laptop to the projector now, and all the cables are hdmi

  • kryptonidas@lemmings.world
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    1 hour ago

    I’m glad I can plug in one port and have a dual display setup, all peripherals, speakers, ethernet, charging, etc connected at my desk in one go.

    If I want to leave, unplug one thing and I’m good to go.

    • otp@sh.itjust.works
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      32 minutes ago

      I’m glad I can purchase an external dock for an extra few hundred dollars to get the functionality back that existed in older models

      • ShovelDad@lemmy.world
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        19 minutes ago

        It would be pretty annoying to have to unplug/plug in everything that the previous commenter mentioned every time you wanted to move your laptop. So for something that’s meant to be a portable work station, I think it makes sense to use a stationary adapter over a bunch of individual ports on the laptop itself. It would be nice if it was common for laptops to come with an adapter that includes all the ports that are commonly used though.

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          1 minute ago

          Exactly my situation. My laptop has enough ports that I don’t strictly need a dock. I still have and use two though, one for home and one at work

  • fury@lemmy.world
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    11 minutes ago

    I’m on the other side wishing peripherals would catch up and all become USB-C already. I’m tired of USB-A.

  • FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world
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    2 minutes ago

    All you need is a couple of USB-C ports and maybe a HDMI port on most modern laptops. More is good but not a requirement.

  • dinckel@lemmy.world
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    9 minutes ago

    I dont know why this is controversial. I’m way more happy with 4x USB-C, than 5 unique ports, that will likely never be used on a regular basis, even when they were relevant

  • HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    Fuck firewire. Glad it’s dead. USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.

      I would agree with you if there were a simple way to tell what the USB-C cable I have in my hand can be used for without knowing beforehand. Otherwise, for example, I don’t know whether the USB-C cable will charge my device or not. There should have been a simple way to label them for usage that was baked into the standard. As it is, the concept is terrific, but the execution can be extremely frustrating.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          9 minutes ago

          Damn, check out the price of the thing someone else linked to at AliExpress for a fraction of that price. But having to spend money on that should not be necessary.

          • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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            1 minute ago

            That aliexpress device doesn’t tell you what wattage or data speed the cable will max out doing. Just what wattage it’s currently doing (to which you’d need to make sure that the device you’re testing with on the other side is capable and not having it’s own issues). Also can’t tell you if the cable is have intermittent problems. If all you care about is wattage, then fine. But I find myself caring more about the supported data speeds and quality of the cable.

            But yes, I agree that cables should just be marked what they’re rated for… However it’s possible well built cables exceed that spec and could do better than they’re claiming which just puts us in the same boat of not really knowing.

      • HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee
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        2 hours ago

        Hey that’s a fair point. Funny how often good ideas are kneecapped by crap executions.

        • NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works
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          2 hours ago

          I’m pretty sure the phrase “kneecapped by crap executions” is in the USB working groups’s charter. It’s like one of their core guiding principles.

          • db2@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            If anyone disagrees with this, the original USB spec was for a reversible connector and the only reason we didn’t get to have that the whole time was because they wanted to increase profit margins.

            • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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              1 hour ago

              USB has always been reversible. In fact you have to reverse it at least 3 times before it’ll FUCKING PLUG IN.

            • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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              12 minutes ago

              That’s the reason Apple released the Lightning connector. Apple pushed for several features for USB ~2010, including a reversible connector, but the USB-IF refused. Apple wanted USB-C, but couldn’t wait for the USB-IF to come to an agreement so they could replace the dated 20-pin connector.

      • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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        32 minutes ago

        Do not all USB C cables have the capability to do Power Delivery? I thought it was up to the port you plugged it in to support it?

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          29 minutes ago

          Nope. My daughter is notorious for mixing up cables when they come out of the brick. Some charge her tablet, some are for data transfer, some charge other devices but not her tablet. It’s super confusing. I had to start labeling them for her.

          • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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            26 minutes ago

            Come to think of it, all the USB C cables I have are from phone and device chargers so I just took it for granted. Good to know. Thanks for sharing some knowledge with me

            • InputZero@lemmy.world
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              14 minutes ago

              USB-c cables can vary drastically. Power delivery alone ranges from less than 1 amp at 5 volts to over 5 amps at 20 volts. That’s 5 watts of power on the low end to 100 watts of power on the high end and sometimes more. When a cable meant to run at 5 watts has over 100 watts of power run through, the wires get really hot and could catch fire. The charger typically needs to talk to a very small chip in the high power cables for the cables to say, yes I can handle the power. Really cheap chargers might just push that power out regardless. So while the USB-c form factor is the one plug to rule them all, the actual execution is a fucking mess.

      • Krzd@lemmy.world
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        42 minutes ago

        Yeah, I totally get that there is a need for cheap power only cables, but why are there what feels like 30 different data “standards”. Just gimme power-only, data, and fast-data. And yeah, in 2 years there’ll be a faster data protocol, so what, that’s then fast-data24, fast-data26, etc. and manufacturers have to use a specific pictogram to label them according to the highest standard they fulfill.

      • rumba@lemmy.zip
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        2 hours ago

        Burn all the USBC cables with fire except PD. The top PD cable does everything the lower cable does.

        • Janovich@lemmy.world
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          48 minutes ago

          IDK I’ve had PD cables that looked good for a while but turns out their data rate was basically USB2. It seems no matter what rule of thumb I try there are always weird caveats.

          No, I’m not bitter, why would you ask that?

          • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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            7 minutes ago

            Correct. The other comment is giving bad advice.

            Both power delivery and bandwidth are backwards compatible, but they are independent specifications on USB-C cables. You can even get PD capable USB-C cables that don’t transmit data at all.

            Also, that’s not true for Thunderbolt cables. Each of the 5 versions have specific data and power delivery maximum specifications.

          • rumba@lemmy.zip
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            18 minutes ago

            You forgot thunderbolt and usb4 exists now

            You can buy a single cable that does 40GB and USB4 and charges at 240w.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      19 minutes ago

      Nah, USB-A was the best since it replaced serial ports (esp PS/2, which was much harder to plug in) and outlived/outclassed FireWire. USB-C is the best thing since HDM (screw you VGA amd DVI), which was the best since USB-A.

    • viking@infosec.pub
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      3 hours ago

      I agree with USB-C, but there are still a million USB-A devices I need to use, and I can’t be bothered to buy adapters for all of them. And a USB hub is annoying.

      Plus, having 1-2 USB-C ports only is never gonna be enough. If they are serious about it, why not have 5?

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        You can’t buy a UCB-C Wifi dongle that last time I checked. You have to buy a c-to-a adapter, then use a usb-a wifi dongle. It’s nuts that those don’t exist.

        • Lemming421@lemmy.world
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          51 minutes ago

          Genuine question - what device do you have that has USB-C ports, no USB-A ports, doesn’t have WiFi, but supports the dongle?

          • Krzd@lemmy.world
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            38 minutes ago

            Some applications need very specific drivers and protocols that aren’t compatible with normal chips. Or you have to connect to a device via WiFi but still need internet. Also long range WiFi antennas are amazing.

      • iopq@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        I bought some adaptors in China for around $0.50 each. It really isn’t that big of a deal

    • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      I hated when mice became the primary interface to computers, and I still do.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          44 minutes ago

          I agree with OP and I haven’t used a tiling WM in years (used XMonad BTW; i3 was okay). I currently use KDE Plasma 6 because it doesn’t have many drawbacks (used GNOME until Wayland worked properly on KDE), and I can use it pretty well w/o a mouse.

        • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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          2 hours ago

          Even for like 20 years after mousing became the primary interface, you could still navigate much faster using keyboard shortcuts / accelerator keys. Application designers no longer consider that feature. Now you are obliged to constantly take your fingers off home position, find the mouse, move it 3cm, aim it carefully, click, and move your hand back to home position, an operation taking a couple of seconds or more, when the equivalent keyboard commands could have been issued in a couple hundred milliseconds.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              37 minutes ago

              I don’t think mice were a mistake, but they’re worse for most of the tasks I do. I’m a software engineer and I suck at art, so I just need to write, compile, and test code.

              There are some things a mouse is way better for:

              • drawing (well, a drawing tablet is better)
              • 3d modeling
              • editing photos
              • first person shooters (KB works fine for OG Doom though)
              • bulk file operations (a decent KB interface could work though)

              But for almost everything else, I prefer a keyboard.

              And while we’re on a tangent, I hate WASD, why shift my fingers over from the normal home row position? It should be ESDF, which feels way more natural…

              • Wav_function@lemmy.world
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                7 minutes ago

                Thanks, I got you beat on ESDF though because i’m a RDFG man, since playing counter strike 1.6. With WASD they usually put crouch or something on ctrl but my pinky has a hard time stretching down there, but on RDFG my pinky has easy access to QW AS ZX, and tab caps and shift with a little stretch. It’s come in handy when playing games with a lot of keybinds.

                • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                  3 minutes ago

                  Pfff, minutes after trying to minimize your nerdiness, you post this confession.

              • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                28 minutes ago

                I always rebind to ESDF if the game doesn’t do stupid things preventing it from being practical. The addition of the 1QAZ strip being available to the pinky is a killer feature all on its own. I typically use that for weapon switching, instead of having to stretch up to 1234 and take my fingers off the movement keys.

                Tablets are better than mice at drawing, modelling, and photo editing. Mice are good for first person shooters. Game controllers are better for most other games. You can mouse in dired-mode i guess, if you’re a casual.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 minutes ago

                  The problem is they generally use E and F for something, which results in a cascade of rebinding.

                  And yeah, tablets are better, but they’re also more expensive and don’t do other mice things. For how rarely I do 3D modeling and whatnot (pretty rare), making sure my mouse has a middle button is plenty.

                  And yeah, I much prefer controller, even for FPS since I don’t play competitively (even then, I’ve seen awesome videos about gyro aiming).

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              38 minutes ago

              It’s also an age thing. My visual processing is getting worse and worse. My disorientation facing a busy screen with literally thousands of objects that can be interacted with by mouse is a cognitive drain compared to a textual interface where I do most of the work abstractly without having to use visual processing at all. Like reading a book vs watching a movie.

              I probably have a lot more experience using pre-mouse era computers than most people. It’s like being asked to start using a different language when you are 20. Yeah, you’ll become perfectly fluent for a couple decades… but you’ll also lose that language first when you get old.

              I have noticed that millenials navigate multilayer mouse interfaces (like going down a few chained drop down menus) way faster than I ever did. And zoomers use touch screen keyboards almost as well as I ever touchtyped. Brains are only plastic to a degree, and it just plain feels good to use all those neurons that you first laid down when you were young and your mind was infinite.

          • Agent641@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            I just use a mouse to type in stuff using the on screen keyboard. It’s annoying having to take the ball out and clean it, but you get used to it.

              • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                1 hour ago

                I used the logitech optical trackball mouse for quite a few years! Did not play a lot of FPS a that time…

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  37 minutes ago

                  I love trackballs (except that Kensington above. It was basically a pinch your skin torture device.) I still use the Logitech M570 trackball. It’s pretty good.

                  My favorite of all time though was the Logitech Trackman Vista. Absolutely perfect form factor that Logitech just gave up on one day and I will never know why.

            • Wav_function@lemmy.world
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              1 hour ago

              Hey they made new technology where you can just yell at the computer and it’ll understand 60% of what you’re saying.

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              1 hour ago

              I kept every mouse ball I ever obtained and display them in my china cabinet.

          • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            Sounds like I’m glad “home row” style typing fell out of favour. It may be the theoretically fastest way to type eventually, but it seems to lead to pretty rigid behaviour. Adapting to new things as they come along and changing your flow to move with them instead of against them is just a much more comfortable way to live. Even if I only type 80% as fast.

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              1 hour ago

              I have no idea what you mean by “fell out of favour”. Does your keyboard not have pips on F and J? People still touch type. Dunno what to tell you.

              You’re getting hung up on “home row”. You still have to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse and back. It’s the same problem, whether or not you know how to type well and stare at your hands, except now you have to add steps for “look at the screen” and “look back at your hands”.

              • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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                48 minutes ago

                Fell out of favour in that it isn’t taught as “the correct way to type” any more. Largely because most devices you type on now wouldn’t even have physical keys. So learning home row typing for the occasional time the thing you are typing on is a physical full sized keyboard just disrupts the flow of everything else.

                Being perfectly optimal isn’t as productive as it feels, especially when it leads to resistance to change and adapt.

                • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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                  33 minutes ago

                  Home row is absolutely still taught as the “correct” way to type. Source: kids are in elementary school

                • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                  25 minutes ago

                  Yes, it is taught. If you take a typing course, you will be taught to use home row. What you mean is, you were never taught to type because we don’t teach that in school anymore. If you do most your typing on a touch screen, I have to imagine: you are so young. In 20 years when no one is using a touch screen to enter text anymore (but likely still use physical keyboards), you will remember this conversation, and have some greater insight.

                  Whether or not you know how to touch type, in any situation where there is a mouse, THERE IS A PHYSICAL KEYBOARD. Not knowing how to touch type just makes the task switching overhead greater.

          • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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            1 hour ago

            Sure, it’s not 100% better in all situations. But when you’re unfamiliar with something, almost universally, it’s far more intuitive.

            And this doesn’t even take into account things like gaming. I also can’t imagine trying to do visual design things solely with the computer. Like any type of drawing or schematic design.

            Being pretty adept at using the keyboard, I’m often frustrated when I find out that the only way to do something is by mouse when there appears that there should be an easy way to do it by keyboard. But, man, I can’t imagine longing for the days before the mouse.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              26 minutes ago

              Yes, the mouse is useful in many situations (esp 3d modeling), so I don’t think anyone is arguing that it shouldn’t exist.

              The problem, however, is that we’ve standardized on it for everything, to the point where software often ignores a better KB-driven workflow because the mouse one is good enough. “When all you have is a hammer…”

              We’ve prioritized “intuitive” over “efficient.” There’s nothing wrong with learning to properly use a tool, and it’s sad that we don’t expect users to put in that modicum of effort. In the 80s and 90s, that’s just how things were, you either learn the tools (often with a handbook) or you don’t use them. The net result was a populace that didn’t need support as much, because they were used to reading the docs. If a component died, the docs would tell you how to diagnose and fix it. These days, those docs just don’t exist, so if the solution isn’t intuitive, you replace it (both hardware and software).

              That’s where this frustration comes from. Making things intuitive also means reducing the average person’s understanding of their tools, and the mouse is a symptom of that shift.

          • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            When I’m “computering” for efficiency, I don’t take my hands off the keyboard. Half of my job is on a standard keyboard, and so familiarizing myself with all the shortcuts and whatnot saves a lot of time versus having to travel back and forth to a mouse or track pad.

            When I am just satisfying the dopamine urges, it’s mouse all the way.

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              56 minutes ago

              Sure. It’s a lowest common denominator interface. With all that comes with that.

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              1 hour ago

              I’ve used ion, ratpoison, i3, sawfish, and other tiling window managers for fifteen or more years, all totaled up. There is a great deal of pressure to use a modern desktop environment and it’s a lot of work maintaining my janky bespoke desktop environment functions necessary for a few critical applications. I use KDE’s tiling features and keyboard shortcuts, but it’s a double edged sword because I have to disable all window manager bindings in (for example) Blender and emacs to avoid shadowing important features. Actually, I have re-implemented a lot of my custom KDE shortcuts as emacs bindings as well, so they still work when emacs has the focus. Here’s one:

              (cl-flet ((switch-to (name)
              	    (lambda ()
              	      (interactive)
              	      (shell-command (concat "wmctrl -a " name)))))
                (global-set-key (kbd "s-1") (switch-to "librewolf"))
                (global-set-key (kbd "s-2") (switch-to "konsole"))
                (global-set-key (kbd "s-3") (switch-to "signal"))
                (global-set-key (kbd "s-4") (switch-to "darktable"))
                (global-set-key (kbd "s-5") (switch-to "emacs")))
              
              • Shareni@programming.dev
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                45 minutes ago

                For my wm+Emacs work, I unified the shortcuts by calling a separate go bin that checks if the active window is Emacs or not. If it is, it sends the command to the Emacs Daemon. If it’s not it sends the command to i3. For directional commands like move focus, first check it there’s an Emacs window to that side, if not send the command to i3.

                • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                  20 minutes ago

                  The things we have to go through just to meet basic needs.

                  How are you redirecting all input through your custom exec? Is that an i3 feature?

              • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                22 minutes ago

                why have I made that anonymous function interactive??

                Edit: Oh I think anything you bind to a key has to be interactive.

        • dezmd@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          To an extent. Early 90’s I could navigate WordPerfect in DOS faster than I’ve ever been able to work in MS Word, because it was all keyboard even before I learned proper home key 10 finger typing in high school. Technically my first word processor was Wordstar on one of those Osborne “portable” computers with the 5-inch screen when I was a young kid, but Wordperfect was what I did my first real ‘word processing’ on when I started using it for school projects. So I might just be older in that ‘how do you do fellow kids’ in this sort of discussion.

          To this day, I still prefer mc (Midnight Commander, linux flavored recreation of Norton Commander that does have a Windows port (YMMV on the win port)) to navigate filesystems for non-automated file management.

          I’ve been thoroughly conditioned for mouse use since the mid-late 90s (I call it my Warcraft-Quake era, we still used keyboard only for Doom 1/2 back in the early days), and I feel like it’s a crutch when I’m trying to do productive work instead of gaming. When I spend a few days working using remote shells, I definitely notice a speed increase. Then a few days later I lose it all again when I’m back on that mouse cursor flow brain.

          • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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            59 minutes ago

            I call it my Warcraft-Quake era, we still used keyboard only for Doom 1/2 back in the early days

            This is my main reason for not pining for the days before the mouse: it made gaming 100000x better. I remember when we first started playing quake, a lot of the guys swore by the keyboard only, until I regularly destroyed them with the mouse. . .and they all switched over.

            I’ve also done a lot of graphic design, photo-editing, schematic design, etc. . . and can’t imagine having to do that solely with the keyboard (but again, I’m often like “why isn’t there a keyboard shortcut for this?”).

            Also, when it comes to productivity, I guess it depends on what you are doing because usually my big hurdle is not how quickly I can do actions (that is usually more important in video games, tbh), the big hurdle is sitting down and thinking about how to do it correctly.

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              53 minutes ago

              I have a game controller and a mouse. I don’t use my game controller to code. I don’t use my keyboard to sculpt. The problem isn’t that mice exist at all, its that they are overwhelmingly dominant to the point where most applications do not cater to anything else.

  • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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    1 hour ago

    To be fair, USB-C, especially with Thunderbolt, is much more universal. There are adapters for pretty much every “legacy” port out there so if you really need FireWire you can have it, but it’s clear why FireWire isn’t built into the laptop itself anymore.

    The top MacBook Pro is also the 2016+ pre Apple Silicon chassis (that was also used with M chips, but sort of as a leftover), while the newer MacBook Pro chassis at least brought back HDMI and an SD card reader (and MagSafe as a dedicated charging port, although USB-C still works fine for that).

    Considering modern “docking” solutions only need a single USB-C/Thunderbolt cable for everything, these additional ports only matter when on the go. HDMI comes in handy for presentations for example.

    I’d love to see at least a single USB-A port on the MacBook Pro, but that’s likely never coming back. USB-C to A adapters exist though, so it’s not a huge deal. Ethernet can be handy as well, but most use cases for that are docked anyway.

    I like the Framework concept the most, also “only” 4 ports (on the 13" at least, plus a built-in combo jack), but using adapter cards you can configure it to whatever you need at that point in time and the cards slide into the chassis instead of sticking out like dongles would. I usually go for one USB-C/Thunderbolt on either side (so charging works on either side), a single USB-A and video out in the form of DisplayPort or HDMI. Sometimes I swap the video out (that also works via USB-C obviously) for Ethernet, even though the Ethernet card sticks out. For a (retro) LAN party, I used 1 USB-C, USB-A (with a 4-port hub for wired peripherals), DisplayPort and Ethernet.

  • thmnwlf@discuss.tchncs.de
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    46 minutes ago

    well… the new one has gained some ports back, also usb c is absolutely OP (if you have the money for the Accessories lel)

  • Gxost@lemmy.world
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    33 minutes ago

    Asus G16 2023 has 2 USB-A, 2 USB-C (one of them supports Thunderbolt), Ethernet, HDMI, 3.5 mm jack, and a micro-SD slot.

  • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    As long as a computer has 4 usb-c ports, I think you’re covered for everything.

    Yes we had more different ports back in the days, but most were never used.

    Usb-c is way more practical. Still that implies that you have more than 2 Usb-c ports.

    • Omgboom@lemmy.zip
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      2 hours ago

      Yeah guys it’s way more practical to carry 11 usb c dongles everywhere you go

      • fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 hour ago

        That’s the most straw in a straw man I’ve seen in those hwole threads.

        Most new laptops have USB-C, A, and SD/micro SD, and HDMI. That’s 95% of all uses.

        If you really need more then you just bought the wrong laptop. Get a Thinkpad or framework 16. If you need to interface with old hardware, get a contemporary machine.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
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          24 minutes ago

          OK, but that wasn’t the example shown or example given.

          That configuration above (and often one of those collapsible Ethernet ports) makes a lot of sense. And a headphone jack. But that’s a LOT different than just USB-C, which was the complaint.

    • GetOffMyLan@programming.dev
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      5 hours ago

      At work both my monitors and networking go through the same port. The monitor also acts as a usb hub.

      You can buy an adapter and plug everything in one port.

      I love it personally.

      • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        I only have one Usb-c port on my Surface Go 1, but it’s linked to my screen with 4 usb-A ports and one more Usb-c port.

        Same as you, I feel I have enough, at least when it’s hooked up to the screen.

  • frazw@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    This is my ~8 month old work laptop.

    Is a Dell.

    2 usb c not pictured.

    You have options.

    • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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      3 hours ago

      While I personally prefer this, I’m going to guess that the majority of people are generally not going to be using more than 2 or three usb ports at once. My take is that for most people, 2 Cs, an A, DP or HDMI would be optimal.

      The availability of BT and wifi peripherals make this acceptable for many.

      I still have a cutting plotter that uses RS232, but that’s connected to an oldish desktop, on the network, so a laptop never gets connected physically.

      I’m not saying that this is good, simply that this is probably acceptable for many.

      • Carnelian@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I have the same mac pictured above, and also a windows laptop with many ports.

        The mac I plug into my work center via a single usb-c connection which charges it, connects it to my external monitor, and connects it to all of my USB equipment (about 6 items ranging from m&k to music equipment). Having only the one wire is huge in terms of making it easier to break down the machine from its setup and pack it up for the road.

        The pc is connected separately to power as it can’t be powered through the usb-c, and to the monitor separately for some esoteric reason. So then I need a third cable to connect it to my equipment.

        So in my case the less-is-more approach is actually preferable

        that all being said

        I’m sure other windows laptops can be configured with a one-wire solution just fine. And I don’t mean to pretend the 2x usb-c config was a popular choice or anything. Only on like two models or something had it. The newer macbooks brought back sd card slots and hdmi and everything by popular demand.

        I looked into it and you can still run everything off of just one usb-c on those ones, so at the end of the day more options is just better for more people

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          22 minutes ago

          Was just using a new ROG something something laptop for a job. The power connector is some little rectangle thing and it almost fit in a USBc. I was surprised when it was unique. 1 wire aint happening on that.

      • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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        26 minutes ago

        Apple brought back the mag charger.

        I wish it still had the SD reader and one A port, but it doesn’t really come up that often. Just 3D printing and only because I’m too lazy to set up a octoprint server or whatever.

    • reev@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours ago

      Haha I have almost exactly the same one. Probably a slightly older model. Works for most stuff but mine only has 8GB RAM which is a bit of a killer…

    • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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      3 hours ago

      My 4 month old laptop has hdmi on the back, ethernet on the left, four usb 3.whatever slots with two on each side, two USB c slots on the right side, and a microsd slot.

      I think it even has a 3.5mm headset jack but I’d have to get out of bed to check. I don’t have any peripherals that use 3.5mm anymore though so it’s just a nice little bonus.

    • Homescool@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Look at all those ports I’ll never need

      We should have had USBC 20 years ago.

  • Nurgus@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    USB-C is awesome though. I carry one charger amd dongle for HDMI and ethernet. It serves my many devices including Steam Deck, phone and laptop.