Tom's Hardware of Finland

this post pairs especially well with your avatar

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I have fully accepted aggretusko as my fursona except I get mad about health insurance instead of coworkers.

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I love that keyboard. Proposal: use an external numpad and map the numbers to function keys? Unfortunately my solution is inelegant but it’s nice to see DIY ergonomics work going in a good direction, even if the current trend is minimalism above usefulness.

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I’m actually pretty confident that when my Advantage 2 arrives (today!) I’ll love the numpad layer. I liked my 2007 macbook with the numbers actually printed on the keycaps even though it was offset - I expect with ortholinear keys it’ll be second-nature.

Unfortunately it seems like the Dactyl is a strictly DIY thing so far so I’ll have to find a group buy for the PCB or something.

I am already looking in to how to inject some personality into my Advantage like the white/pink one above - lots of neat paint jobs and keycap options around. I definitely want to ditch the ABS keycaps for PBT ASAP.

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I feel so boring for using a Pok3r with just basic ass Cherry blues, but whatever.

OK the Advantage (2) is wonderful to type on. It is much smaller than I expected! 16.5"x8" but it still has 9" between F and J in their typical home row positions because the curved keywells fit keys closer together. I could see the fixed one-piece design being a problem if you’re broad-shouldered, though. Basically my hands are totally relaxed and barely moving to hit each key. It sincerely seems like The Way Keyboards Should Be, and vaguely old sci-fi which gels with the fact that the concave wells were detailed in an IBM patent from the 60s.

That is very cool! Workman-like sports car of keyboards - blues are a little treat for yourself, like getting nice tires. I wish I could keep using my Filco minila. :frowning:

I love this thing but it is more akin to a good tool or medical equipment (which I think is why the Ergodox exists to straddle the line).

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Huh, pretty good seeing so much love for using wacky keyboards here!

looked into ergo-kbs two? years ago, and I never could get myself to plunge down the cash for the advantage, so seeing that there’s a Version 2, i wonder whether that’s been around even back then?

I bought the Microsoft Natural Keyboard and have been rocking it for a while now. Only thing that’s a bit odd is using a cheapo DELL kb at work and having a proper kb at home, normally you’d think it’d be the other way around.

Anyway, that integrated Trackball though… that piques my interest.

I’m kind of similar and I’ve adopted the rarely recommended Cherry Red switches for mechanical keyboard. Lowest noise and resistance. Also works the best for WASD gaming. (I’m not saying that switchtype would address all your concerns, just mentioning.)

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If you’re good with scissor switches, the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic is around $50 and has the fundamentals for wrist pain down - negative tilt, angled split keys, foam wrist wrest.

Also comes in fancy Surface-colored variant with ~alcantara~ but by all accounts the bluetooth is worse than the Sculpt’s RF dongle and it’s just silver plastic instead of black plastic.

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This might be preferable. The keyboard I have uses cherry blue switches, but the actuation force/noise isn’t the issue so much as the key elevation. I also feel like the trapezoid shaped keys creates too much of a gap between keys and it’s too common for my fingers to fall between them. I also… don’t particularly like the tactile feel of these switches? idk I’m probably hopeless

there are low profile mechanical keyboards but tbh I love my logitech k800 that I have at home and I wish they’d just buy me one at work. everything about the feel, layout, and key action just feels perfect to me.

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Yeah, this Kinesis design has been around literally all my life.

https://twitter.com/kinesisergo/status/571002178434830336

The Advantage 2 added Cherry ML switches for the function keys updated the controller to play nice with USB 3 for reasons I don’t understand. Some people buy old PS/2 models and swap the controller out for a new one that runs QMK.

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Yeah I’m the same, I’m pretty OK with a high quality logitech and don’t see too much additional virtue in mechanical switches. The main thing I was looking for when I bought my current keyboard (KUL ES-87) was a layout that is tenkeyless but otherwise totally vanilla (escape key with the traditional size and position, etc), and it turns out that almost all keyboards like this are mechanical.

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Oh wow, this is a much smoother SB experience

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Fuck how do you block ads on this thing

get an adblocker off the app store and enable it in settings > safari

i think adguard is the best free one right now

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I still use 1blocker which is also fine

Wow, ios is real hostile to non safari browsers

I knew that, but I didn’t know that

yup

you can’t replace default handlers, period, which is not so much of a problem anymore for other use cases because the default contacts handler is fine and while I don’t love the default mail app I pretty much never ever hit a regular mailto link anymore, but trying to replace safari will just bifurcate your browsing when any other app opens a link

you also don’t really need to replace it unless you’re using chrome/firefox as your password manager because there are no real mobile browser advantages, and it’s very friendly to 3rd party adblockers these days, so I don’t think it’s a huge limitation in practice, but it is very stubborn!

in general I think modern iOS has taken the blinders off just enough to not really aggravate its massive advantage in performance / long term support / privacy / out of the box adblocking / security / etc.

see also: you need iTunes for certain things, but you pretty much never need to do those things anymore

it is annoying that mobile safari refuses to stream youtube in >480p under any circumstances though

trying microsoft chrome
initial impression surprisingly positive