The problem with Google Books is search capability within "your library" really has no way to constrain itself to tables of contents and/or indices; even advanced search falls flat on its face by this measure and generally sucks hind tit by every other. I'm just imagining running a search query for "recursion" only to have Hofstadter and Wolfram comprise 90%+ of the return.
Even if full search capability is what you really want, you're limited to ebooks for which digital rights are established via Google Play purchase. For everything else that isn't acknowledged public domain, you'll get a tease preview without even a hint of completeness...if you get anything at all. Invested in a Kindle digital library? I'm liable to suspect Google gave users vested in Amazon DRM a gratuitous GTFO-not-in-my-backyard finger.
Then there's the issue of specific revisions, e.g. it doesn't matter that Google Books shows skant preview of 4e Sedra/Smith when 5e is on my bookshelf--which, oh by the way, doesn't have preview.
Then there's the issue of copyright lockdown, e.g. only one of Carroll Smith's popular ...to Win series has any preview; the others are on lockdown. Same with Milliken on vehicle dynamics, Katz on aerodynamics, and many other titles published by SAE.
(Observe how the thematic high mark we've been striving for is a mere preview.)
Which brings up the issue of availability, e.g. good lucking trying to find the Institute of Navigation's canonical GPS red books in a Google Books query, or specific translations of the Bhagavad Gita, or other rare publications that an archivist would generally not hesitate to shoot you dead if caught attempting to adulterate in a scanner.
Surely I'm not the only person on HN who maintains a tangible library that's 1000+ large and growing. Like the author, I care about what's in my library, not what Google Books superficially pretends to offer as a front to getting me to purchase books in the digital (when available) that I've already paid handsomely for. Amazon and eBay combined see roughly 70% of my bookshelves. Even if Google Books did a fair job by some objective measure, I neither need nor desire their service.
Speculating: Yes, but it's probably a bit harder to make a backdoor in an FPGA that can anticipate and manipulate a custom design. The backdoor would have to be smart enough to know it's running a CPU, although if it could just detect that it's running multiple Ethernet ports, it could still act as a silent forwarder for evil packets or a data mangler. It could conceivably also try to send the FPGA design to the backdoor's owner for them to tell the backdoor what to do next.
Yes, the fab could put in a backdoor. That's why you need to build your own. But, what if the machinery you purchase has a backdoor? Now you need to build your own fab machinery! It's backdoors all the way down. There always has to be some level of trust.
Doesn't really matter, though. If you have to build your tools up from that level, it's going to cost so much that only governments and huge corporations can do it--and those are exactly the people installing the backdoors in the first place, so we're back to square one.
It appears to store data on their server, not in local files as Quiver does. It also looks like it may be (this could be mistaken, I haven't tried Inkdrop) an Electron app, in which case performance & memory usage is likely to be significantly worse than Quiver, which is not only native but very well optimized in my experience. On the plus side, it does have cross-platform support, which Quiver does not.
ETA: yup, grabbed the release and it is an Electron app - can't test without a beta invite, but for comparison on my machine it's about 3-4 seconds on launch before it gets to login screen, and uses 190mb of RAM at login screen. For comparison, Quiver is effectively instantaneous (a lot less than a second) to launch and uses 64mb of RAM displaying an empty document.
>It also looks like it may be (this could be mistaken, I haven't tried Inkdrop) an Electron app, in which case performance & memory usage is likely to be significantly worse than Quiver, which is not only native but very well optimized in my experience.
Quiver is native? From the very first moment it struck me as an 100% web-based app.
Would appear that the preview is a web view but nothing else is, as far as I can tell. Editor might be but I think it's just a series of text views. Rest of the interface is definitely native. Also, even the web parts aren't embedding & shipping Chromium but rather using the MacOS WebKit framework which is definitely preferable from at least a memory usage, battery life, and security standpoint.
How is it "definitely native" is both the editor and the viewers (the two main things you work with in Quiver) are webkit based, as @kawera and @ptomato said?
What else is there, the notebook management sidebar?
Quiver uses cells, similar to Jupyter/IPython Notebook, and supports inline LaTeX, which is a very useful feature for when you need to display something outside the scope of Markdown (like an equation).
LaTeX cell are great and diagram cells are surprisingly useful too. Now if only Quiver supported table cells it would be perfect. I know it's possible to use markdown for tables but they aren't convenient.
Thanks for the recommendation! I gave macspice a try already and really wasn't impressed. LTSpice just has much better GUI support. I know it's a terrible thing to admit on HN, but when it comes to simulation models, a GUI is a really nice thing to have.
