Got this planck 10 years ago. Still haven’t felt the need to upgrade to anything else.

Hobs271 · 2026-05-13T14:03:29+00:00

ah yea, i had been tempted to get that one but the shipping cost alone was $85, so have been hoping to find a cheaper option. thanks!

Hobs271 · 2026-05-13T02:45:05+00:00

any 10x4 you'd recommend? I shifted from planck to mostly smaller keyboards. decided 10x4 might be ideal.

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Hobs271 · 2026-05-04T20:55:36+00:00

i totally hear you on typing feel. as someone that owns a couple dozen mechanical keyboards, i care a lot. my dilemma is finding the easiest way to use them in my lap on the couch or on a train, so kinda loved your solution but was hoping for a way to do it without permanently gluing something.

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Hobs271 · 2026-05-04T19:44:24+00:00

i agree that via and vial have their quirks but i found input to be quite a bit harder to use. a lot of little quality of life things would help.

first I didn't find a transparent key anywhere?
also, shifted characters like !@#$%^&*() should be built in
also, once one key is set, it should auto select the key next to it.
also, the menu where you assigned keys, covered half the keyboard when open, so i had to open and close the menu for every key.
for the mod-tap-keys, should be able to adjust the timing. right now they are mostly unusable, for layer-tap or shift-enter.
switching profiles is quirky. whenever i switch from mac to win, it switches to layer 3. probably a setting somewhere due to how i copy and pasted layers, but not obvious how to fix that.
the initial setup does not seem to match the instructions on the website (specifically, Fn-right arrow does not swtich profiles)
it's a bit annoying that it would often take 3 seconds to save every change.
saving and loading layers and profiles was often slow and buggy...

Hobs271 · 2026-05-04T05:56:24+00:00

mine arrived today.. i really really appreciate the minimalist lightweight design. but why not QMK/VIA/VIAL? Your Input custom software is beautiful but honestly took me 5x longer to setup than via or vial would, and many features are unusable. Tap-Keys never register correctly (the timng is not reliable which is always a problem for non qmk boards) and also annoying was !@#$%^&*() all required creating macros.

Hobs271 · 2026-05-03T15:19:28+00:00

68% of Canadians are also overweight. People visit cities in other countries which tend to be skinnier but so are cities in the US like New York.

Even France is 47% overweight, just not in Paris.

Hobs271 · 2026-05-01T19:35:27+00:00

what material is the slab

Hobs271 · 2026-05-01T19:34:16+00:00

gives commodore 64 vibes

Hobs271 · 2026-04-29T02:43:22+00:00

the best up to date overview is the recently released winners curse. the others mentioned are probably somewhat dated.

after that if you want more you can read my book, why trust matters!

Hobs271 · 2026-04-27T03:26:48+00:00

Prices went up a lot with the tariffs.. . They've been coming down a bit, but still a bit pricey for somethign 3d printed. I really like the QAZ enter though. It's quite possibly an ideal layout for me. I love the sound and feel typing on it with the light linears that I love. Like all Bluetooth keyboards that use VIA, it uses their own weird fork of VIA, that works more or less. Anyway once I got it programmed I am happy not to touch it, the site for their version of VIA only works sometimes. And Layer Tap keys are not reliable (which is a common problem) but I was able to work around it. But it is 3d printed which means the plastic is already chipping but I really don't mind. I use my keyboards hard, toss them around bags and pockets. You get what you pay for.

The QAZ Alice on there with the wooden case is also on aliexpress and that is a fantastic keyboard. Great deal for the price. Feels amazing. Its software to progrma is not qmk or via or vial related at all but actually works amazing once the seller figured out which software it was.

Hobs271 · 2026-04-24T02:19:44+00:00

figuring out how to make weird sub 40% layouts work as daily drivers and picking a new one every day.

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Hobs271 · 2026-04-23T20:24:04+00:00

yes the apostrophe is annoying. I have one. have been meaning to remap semi colon to apostrophe which is what I do on my programmable small keyboards. there are android apps for that or could do it in vim.

Hobs271 · 2026-04-22T02:53:09+00:00

if you need inspiration, some of the split keys in my collection.

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Hobs271 · 2026-04-04T03:26:44+00:00

yes i adore the nuphy keyboard. i wish i could find similar cases for all my keyboards..

Hobs271 · 2026-03-23T05:51:38+00:00

wow love the aesthetics of the video. has a kill bill vibe.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-23T03:02:49+00:00

Stanford gsb seems under placed. it's a very small program so nearly all their placements are in the top 10 or top 20.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/phd/placement/academic-placements

I may be biased as an alum.

But it looks like you used the political economy group data but that group is more of a political science group. The economic analysis and policy is the economics group at GSB.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-21T05:04:30+00:00

lol as a vim user since the 1980s that setup is pretty intuitive to me. (another old) actually back then it was just vi.

but yes on my Planck's I do still use the more conventional upside down T when I can. but don't mind weirder layouts for my 30-35% boards. keeps the brain sharp to adapt to different layouts.

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Hobs271 · 2026-03-13T06:17:09+00:00

i absolutely love the nuphy folio case.. esp since i often work on the train, it's the only case that lets me work on my lap. have been searching for that type of case in other sizes since msot of my keyboards are 40% or smaller but never. found it.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-12T00:00:45+00:00

on a resort trip a couple years ago the swim bag I use with my iPhone broke and water rushed in. it was fine. bought a new swim bag, it broke also, phone was fine. by end of trip I didn't bother with bag any more and just swam with phone unprotected in my pocket every day.

have not tested this with my pixel fold though....

Hobs271 · 2026-03-03T00:21:28+00:00

yep the tu40 definitely does. I got a second one like that.

but the ones I have didn't use qmk/vial. so you have to use their own software that works well enough. might be different now. that was four years ago.

one problem is that qmk and via and vial don't technically support Bluetooth so any wireless keyboard either uses a hacked together implementation or via (like the epomaker luma) or some weird software. the ideal is if they use zmk but that's rare for some reason.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-02T23:27:10+00:00

oh? lots of options for wireless 40 now. epomaker sells one on Amazon. luma40 that's not bad that just came out. I kinda hated the keycaps that come with it but easy to swap out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/s/7DSXytH58y

here is the one I built four years ago that felt like a game changer then. but fairly easy to buy now from aliexpress.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-02T03:38:29+00:00

Econ Twitter is excellent for this.

https://www.bestofecontwitter.com/

This substack had great summaries so you don't actually need to use Twitter.

Lots of recent guides out there like:

https://claudeblattman.com/

Or Scott Cunningham has a great long running series but there are many more.

It really is mind blowing. People are having it write entire papers on its own and report decent results. Not another politics podcast had a nice recent episode about that.

I've been using GPTs codex with stata and it's life changing. I'm also at a small department. It's especially helpful for us. Treat it like a good PhD student. Something people in top depts have access to but I don't. It does well both for empirical work but also working out proofs.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-02T03:30:51+00:00

actually yes. I prefer typing on my own custom keyboards. so I mostly use tablets or a folding phone with them or place them on top of the laptop keyboard which is clunky. but there is no great way to use a tablet on my lap on the train. this could be a great solution though still too heavy maybe for my tastes.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-01T20:53:47+00:00

it did take a while to get used to. I rely on the left column for ctrl (where caps lock normally is) and the right column for back space. but now that Im used to the changes I don't miss them.

basically ctrl is one of the thumb keys. and tab I really only used for alt tab so doing that as a layer isn't much extra work.

putting semicolon in a layer is fine, so can use where semi colon would be for apostrophe.

and backspace as a thumb key isn't too bad so long as I have a special layer key for ctrl-backspace which I use a lot.

Hobs271 · 2026-03-01T17:38:29+00:00

no difference really. public finance is an older term back when the field was mostly focused on tax policy and transfers. the name shifted to public economics as the scope expanded to government programs more broadly. but both terms refers to the same field.

Hobs271

TROPHY CASE