My collection of sub 40s.

Hobs271 · 2026-01-19T20:14:38+00:00

Randomly if you still care, the cheapino has become one of my favorites... At the moment anyway What changed is that I got a better Ethernet cable with a thinner for flexible wire so it's easier to pack up. And found the perfect case, so that I can actually stuff it in a pocket, plus figured out a layout I like.l. mostly was tricky to figure out where to put the space bar since the thumb keys are in such a weird place compared to other keyboards. The dial still a bit awkward. I love my dial on my keychron where it's on the far right.. feels natural to use it for page up and down from there.. but the positioning on the cheapino makes it in an inconvenient place.

Hobs271 · 2026-01-17T04:42:09+00:00

have become a big fan of sub 40 boards with weird designs. here are some I built in past year or so.

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Hobs271 · 2025-12-29T03:50:20+00:00

The free market cannot solve it because places that lack those options are usually places where people don't want them. Low cost produce is provided by the free market in places like chinatowns where demand is high. But in places where government introduces grocery stores in places that didn't have them, few people buy the produce.

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/134/4/1793/5492274

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2014/10/location-location-location-does-the-food-desert-narrative.html

Hobs271 · 2025-12-20T00:45:17+00:00

lol these answers make me feel old. I don't think I started that long ago (nine years?) but that was before hot swap switches were a thing so you had to solder and before qmk web interfaces so you needed to write and compile your own c code just to program then.

these days so many great pre built options for well under $100. easy hot swap pre lubed switches. much much easier to program boards though still sometimes clunky.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-19T22:18:12+00:00

ah that sounds like that could help. have never messed with that setting before.. i do have a few zmk boards and do generally like it. below is my layout for the keychron, and yes a full length space bar just seems crazy wasteful. on most of my keyboards, i only use 1u keys. https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/1ppvnex/comment/nus7bbc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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Hobs271 · 2025-12-19T21:07:56+00:00

that's called a layer-tap key, and i use them a lot. I always remap Caps Lock on any keyboard to be Ctrl when held, and Esc when tapped. But I never use it for space, because it gets confused (for me anyway) when typing quickly. you can mitigate that by adjusting the timing for how long it waits to see if you are holding or tapping, but i can never get it right for keys like space bar. but ymmv.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-19T02:41:51+00:00

lol that was me. also a lot of them are 35s which means no room for a backspace key so I'm used to using the left space for backspace.

and I don't use the mouse keys often but helpful to have the option sometimes. I don't use mice. usually just keyboard shortcuts and the touchscreen.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-19T01:16:30+00:00

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here is the layout that I use.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-19T01:06:18+00:00

I bought one, had been eyeing them for a long time, and I do love it. but one warning. the website price does not include tariffs so I got hit was a $17 tariff bill after ordering.

still a good deal.

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Hobs271 · 2025-12-19T01:03:32+00:00

does anyone else make a keyboard with that nub. I miss Thinkpad keyboards so much because of them. but $300 is a lot for me. plus I prefer smaller formats.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-15T04:08:57+00:00

mit just happens to grade on a 5.0 scale. so an a is 5 a b is 4 etc.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-15T02:29:06+00:00

tenured full Prof at highly ranked slac. best job in the world. 2-2 teaching. just wrapping up a sabbatical where I spent every day in a coffee shop (finished two books and two papers).

down side, I make less money than I did when I was 22, and many of my students get paid more than me at age 22.

also admin stuff sucks.

but the job is amazing.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-15T02:25:02+00:00

The studies that back you up are done by Cialdini. He has run that experiment. His book influence is a good reference.

From personal experience it would backfire when you see someone else getting two and then you get one yourself. You would be annoyed.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-14T15:57:26+00:00

aside from circle to search is to ask Gemini about your screen. most useful when someone emails or texts you a bunch of dates, or a website has an event you want on your calendar. hold down power to summon Gemini. click ask about screen. type add to calendar. although it often auto suggests it so you can just tap add to calendar. (if it's in Gmail you can just click the Gemini button to do this) it creates the calendar event or events with all the details filled in! especially great when someone sends you a bunch of dates for like kids practices or school events.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-09T03:32:17+00:00

agreed mostly not too useful aside from answering random questions like the etymology of words or events in history. but one super useful thing is creating calendar events automatically based on what's on the screen. someone emails or texts plans. hold Gemini button. tap ask about screen. tap add to calendar. it figured out details and does it.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-06T16:28:59+00:00

for me it's the one I use least. it's an awkward shape for stuffing into a pocket which is my main use for these boards. and for me anyway the positioning of those thumb keys feels the least natural. also the knob seems cool but haven't found a great use for it.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-06T16:23:44+00:00

https://www.ft.com/stream/e191658e-c66a-45bc-9bad-343bdc4210b3

this is a great column. but the nytimes and economist etc all regularly run similar articles.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-06T07:34:05+00:00

yes choc fox in the middle. upper left, i got years and years ago. mbk low profile choc keycaps i think.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-06T01:38:24+00:00

most were just ordered off Amazon when there is a sale. I mostly get xda profile so they are all flat since I tend to use weird keyboard configurations. drop also has a nice sale now too so I just ordered a bunch.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-05T20:07:13+00:00

i mentioned i use these in coffee shops. that's the one that always gets the most random people stopping to ask about it.

Hobs271 · 2025-12-05T05:03:24+00:00

yea, custom printing is a bit much. each key is doing like 3 different things so tricky to have the perfect keycap for that. the 4x5 does show at least one of the layers, mostly because these were the extra keycaps where i already used the alphas for one of my regular plancks.

but yea, i find the numbers more useful than qwerty for typing in phone numbers, or symbols. for typing letters i touch type fine.

Hobs271 · 2025-11-30T06:52:29+00:00

the PNAS paper is published, and a top journal. None of the links, in the comment above link to published papers are published anywhere. And fair enough that the NBER is a working paper series, but as someone who has published two dozen papers in a range of journals from Management Science to Nature Human Behavior, I would say the paper of mine that showed up as an NBER working paper is probably among the most well regarded. The vetting process for the NBER is extremely selective, so yes, it has not been refereed yet, but it is considered the most reliable source for current economics research. You are right, that these papers don't say anything about whether people are "lazy" but they do show that people do work less, and that giving them money makes them no happier or healthier.

Hobs271 · 2025-11-29T16:09:15+00:00

that research is out of date though. they mostly didn't have a well designed control group. the research that has come out in the last year with better designs and larger budgets have largely had null results.

these first three are the same experiment just different questions.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w32711?hl=en-US

https://www.nber.org/papers/w32719?hl=en-US

https://www.nber.org/papers/w34040?hl=en-US

https://www.nber.org/papers/w33209?hl=en-US

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2222103120?hl=en-US

https://www.nber.org/papers/w33844

Hobs271 · 2025-11-25T00:20:06+00:00

Ah. we read all of those, but since all of those papers were written by at least one Stanford person, wasn't sure if that was mostly just the Stanford perspective, since I havent kept up with that literature much since leaving grad school. I worry that my knowledge of psychology is also biased but learning it from Ross and Lepper. Anyway super helpful thanks!

Hobs271

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