I too am a bit surprised this made it on the front page. Mu4e is definitely niche, and I wouldn't crow about it like I do org or magit. I've only been using it for less than a month and it will be a while before I know whether it is a net win.
Also, the real test would have been my much more voluminous work email!
The HTML rendering isn't great, as you said, but you are two keystrokes from opening that email in a browser, if you have to.
And I have tweaked the config several times now, but I think that's mostly because I'm changing my (and the charity's) email, which involves a lot of shuffling about. Again, in six months, I'll have another look and decide whether it _really_ helped.
This was my second attempt to get email working on Emacs and I gave up the first time, too. I persisted this time and I _think_ it will pay off. There is the obvious danger of this becoming another "project", but I'll make a note to check-in again in six months. It's an experiment!
I've not seen the other things you mentioned. I only check for email every 10 minutes, but opening and (especially) searching for emails seem much faster than doing it in Gmail. Plus, I can do searches across email accounts, like all unreads across all three accounts. That was definitely slower in the online clients.
Finally, there's a quick ('a' then 'v') way to just open a message in a browser if the HTML is too thick.
My organization also explicitly blocks access from other clients than Microsoft Outlook, even if the credentials are correct and the protocol is supported. They also refused providing an exception, citing that I can just use the web interface via Microsoft Edge on Linux. (Which I prefer not to do for many reasons, e.g. backing up my emails locally, working offline, and authoring using native tools.)
Currently, only Thunderbird with the proprietary "OWL" extension somehow manages to connect despite the block. My understanding is that they somehow abuse the web interface to do so, instead of actually going through the proper protocols, but not sure.
If someone has another way to access Exchange servers that intentionally blocks non-Outlook clients I’d love to hear about it.
I am surprised as davmail with the Exchange protocol has worked for me since I set it up. They made offlineimap unusable but davmail works (it even has a small web client for the login when more than a month has passed). ??
Edit: they (my Uni) made offlineimap unusable, but it works with davmail.
I actually haven’t tried DavMail (but have heard about it), so if it manages to get around this sort of shenanigans I’ll happily give that a shot.
In my previous org I could also use offlineimap and msmtp to connect to their Microsoft mail server via standard protocols. But in this org I’ve so far tried the built-in Exchange support in Thunderbird as well as in Evolution Data Server based exchange clients (Evolution and KMail). All of them manage to connect to the server, kinda, but then I get an error message saying basically that my mail client is not approved and I’ll have to contact my admin to use it.
EDIT: I might add that the IT deliberately blocked non-Outlook mail clients a year ago or so, other Linux users told me that it worked fine before that. It’s supposedly a crackdown on people using shady third-party apps that they are concerned might exfiltrate data, but somehow they don’t allow exceptions even for reputable clients like Thunderbird.
You are repeating the very same history and excuses (from the IT Dpt.) I lived and heard. Davmail works for me on Linux and MacOS even from outside the intranet. Give it a try and I would be happy to help, I have a gmail account with my nick.
I worry about all of this labelling that we apply to various ends of the "normal" spectrum. Where does it lead us? Is it actually helping?
I easily score as ADHD, but I'm in my 60s now and have never been diagnosed or treated. I have muddled through all my life. Yes, I often self-medicated unhealthily (cigarettes, various over-the-counter uppers), but also relatively healthily (I've been practicing meditation for decades). I managed to have two, long, fruitful careers (20 years of journalism, coming up to 20 years of software engineering) that (I'm betting) was at least partly attributable to me being on the outer edges of normal.
I think that's OK. I'm not looking to be "treated" because I'm a bit different.
I think there is value in knowing a term for the symptoms one might experience because it provides the ability to connect with like-minded people and potentially look into useful strategies to mitigate those symptoms, if they become problematic.
However, I do strongly agree with you that setting a boundary to "normal" and therefore implying these states to be abnormal and something that needs to be fixed is not helpful. We should be able to label a wide spectrum of neurological wiring quirks without nudging people towards changing them, unless it actually negatively impacts their ability to live a fulfilling life.
> However, I do strongly agree with you that setting a boundary to "normal" and therefore implying these states to be abnormal and something that needs to be fixed is not helpful. We should be able to label a wide spectrum of neurological wiring quirks without nudging people towards changing them, unless it actually negatively impacts their ability to live a fulfilling life.
Except I don't buy this framing that the two are in conflict. The more general awareness there is in the general population around neurodiversity, simultaneously the less shame there is about medicating and also, the greater willingness there is to accommodate each person's individual diversity.
Accomodations initially rolled out for diagnosed neurodiverse people: Like being able to control the lighting in your workspace, or being issued noise cancelling headphones no questions asked, also benefit neurotypical people who are also on the further end of the bell curve for things like that.
> We should be able to label a wide spectrum of neurological wiring quirks without nudging people towards changing them, unless it actually negatively impacts their ability to live a fulfilling life.
This is already the case. Maladaptation is a fundamental diagnostic criteria of essentially every neuropsychiatric condition. There is no reason to treat something if it's not causing you harm.
Sounds familiar. I've been quite successful professionally, I have accomplished many nice things. But always in the final days/hours and under extreme pressure (ie 2 nights of no sleep to finish PhD thesis in time for print for defense, etc, very difficult for people around me also. I'm currently working on our old house. Also not nice for me, and people around me. The results are pretty nice and technically fully correct though.)
I've had the same comment about being chaotic, and not being able to see the bigger picture during performance reviews my whole life. But I've always felt unable to see the bigger picture if not understanding the details. Although recently I've gotten better at letting go, trusting my mental models etc, but also at finding great, structured project leads (or assistants if I'm in the lead). Such people are invaluable to me, although I must say that I also start to find it easier and easier to just copy their behaviour (ie things like "Start project with timeline, not important if it's 100% accurate, its more about the order of things" - etc... At least you will appear very structured which radiates confidence!).
I've also had a manager at one point in my career that said: We really just want you to start many things, you are in research not in development. It's great that you start with so much enthusiasm, let de development people determine the fit for product later... (But perhaps a bit more "eye on the market" would be nice!)
That was somewhat of an eye opener, at 35 (42 now).
This is an important point that I missed and didn't mention: My work and school life were really hard and chaotic. This is so intrinsically part of me that I didn't even notice, but has generated a lot of stress on me and my family. I guess getting treatment would have saved me a lot of that. I wonder if it is worth it, as a 62-year-old and probably within 5/6-ish years of retirement?
I wonder the same thing (but with ~25 years to go). It would probably be better for my relationships.
But I've heard from people doing some tests with certain medications that indeed they were able to focus and plan like never before. But also loose some passion and creativity. I've heard from yet others that they should have started way earlier, before essentially wrecking their life.
I think for me at times medication would help me. But it feels like a big step and I'm not "ill", I'm not wrecking my life, my life is ok. I also feel like "this is me, I'm learning about the good and the bad." Idk, maybe I'm overly sentimental about it. I'm also to lazy to go to the doctor.
From what I have been seeing about ADHD lately, using the adrenaline of last-minute time pressure to get things done is a common ADHD coping mechanism.
My pet theory is that one of the reasons for an increase in the diagnosis of ADHD is that fewer people smoke today. Nicotine as a stimulant likely treated a lot of undiagnosed cases of ADHD.
My ADHD became screamingly obvious when I quit smoking, about a year after seriously reducing my coffee drinking from a couple pots a day to a cup or two.
Where it leads us, is to people with ADHD suffering less. Which, I don't know about you, but making fewer people suffer and for people to suffer less are basically the two driving motivations for life, so I'm in favor of it.
You're older, so you grew up in a different time, and you found your place in the world. The treatment means finishing projects, not needing to wait until the last minute to do something in order to do it. It means less stress and unecessary anxiety. It's helping people reach their potential, and not fall into the cracks.
My mother is very similar to what you have described and mimicks some reponses of her to her ADHD situation pre-diagnosis/post-diagnosis.
She is also ~60 and accomplished in her professional,social and family life.
Pre-diagnosis she would reject suggestsions going into the direction of an ADHD diagnosis, due to her accomplishments being above average --> not possible to have a disability/neuro-divergence.
The achievements are her achievements, but the expense in the context of her capabilities was very high and quite taxing on her.
A diagnosis or even treatment is not making the person normal, but it can help provide that person with options to alleviate the expense of operating differently to the baseline.
I am very happy that you managed to have this success in your life so far and you made that happen.
But under your assumption that you have ADHD you might have made that happen against odds that would have been in part optional if you had access to treatment options.
On the other hand for me, these discussions help me to frame my challenges in a productive way that gives me a chance to make useful changes to my life to accomodate them, instead of blaming myself when I struggle to do something that seems like it should be easy. So I guess the answer is, YMMV.
The article doesn't do a good job of highlighting that there is help beyond medication, and that the personal "size" of the problem should be taken inro account. I mean, "answering 6 questions -> yay, stimulants" is a bit of a shortcut, isn't it.
Recognizing that one's problems with being organized (and other executive functions) have a reason, and are not just a result of "being lazy" or "not trying enough" can be powerful and liberating. It allows acceptance and a systematic approach at addressing them. Of course, medication can help a lot while learning how to make things easier for oneself in other ways, but this should be decided with a professional who has experience with diagnosing and treating ADHD in adults, ideally one that does not simply want to push pills.
In any case, it's good to seek out more information or consult a professional IF you think you're being held back. If not, then that's great! For others, articles like this might provide the initial nudge for a noticeable improvement in their lives.
It's interesting to read this from someone who more at a more advanced stage of life, but I also wonder if there is a built-in assumption around diagnoses and treatments being potentially negative.
I think people seek out these diagnoses because they are struggling to cope with modern life in one way or another. I don't think its only a matter of attitudes ("everything must be treated"), but also the fact that the world is different. In other words, there could be two solutions: Medication/treatment to make life easier for the individual, or fix the world such that it can accommodate the arguably natural variance among individuals.
We're choosing the former, because the latter is just so, so difficult. But I think a world exists where the needs of currently medicated people with mild degrees of ADHD could thrive without any medication, and it sounds like a softer, more colorful world.
I believe ADHD might be neutral/beneficial in some environments, and I also am not a big fan of labels; if it has a non-negative impact on your life -- sure, you don't need the meds
but
Until I started doing stims, I was regularly forgetting about food/water until I could barely move, and at one occasion I procrastinated from replying to an email with the offer of my life until the deadline was over. There's a lot that you can explain with "not motivated enough", but these just don't make any sense, right?
You do need some sort of a label to prescribe controlled substances. Even if you forget about the meds, just knowing that it's a pretty common thing and you're not alone is pretty helpful.
Would you say the same if it were as physical disability? If you were born without hands and had slowly learnt how to do everything required in everyday life via an adaptation, would you reject a prosthetic if it were available?
We know people with ADHD are able to manage. The real test is always, after they try medication, is their life easier or not. A lot of people who were adamant they were managing just fine before the meds report afterwards they didn't realize how much effort they were putting in on a day to day basis just to manage themselves.
And this is not some general trend towards overmedicalization. As the article pointed out, there are precisely two psychiatric drugs that have this statistically significant an effect.
Isn't it a bit of a non sequitur? The fact that you choose not to be treated (with a history of unhealthy self-medication) doesn't imply that someone else would not benefit from changing some healthy(-ier) medication specifically targeted at ADHD.
So to answer your questions: 1. it leads us to people getting treated (or at least having the choice) for stuff that makes their life harder 2. Yes, it is helping.
If you suspected you had hypertension, would you be as confident to say we don't need to label and track those because you got old, worked and lived just fine thus far with no major episodes?
You might have been fine because you just have something like 140 mm Hg, whereas others with 180-190 might not be so lucky....
Getting treatment or not is a decision. It is linked to pressure of suffering. You write that you did well and managed your life well. Awesome.
Other people feel extensive pressure of suffering and are not able to manage their lifes like you did. For those, professional treatment can be life saving.
No, it is not just “being treated”, although learning some techniques to control anxiety has helped me a lot (meditation, in my case). Just “know thyself”, and realizing that your struggles have a root different from “laziness” helps with self-esteem.
I love these packages (like this, Spacemacs, Doom, etc.), even though I've used Emacs for over 30 years. I don't use them directly, but they give me ideas and alert me to packages I haven't heard of (eat?). And that gives me an excuse to go on another round of config-tweaking, which any Emacs user loves.
Hear hear. I poked around at almost all the packages on the top of that idemacs page. «minimap» stood out, and is such a brilliant name for its purpose. I enjoyed that discovery and the smirk it gave me today.
I'm a principal software engineer with a degree in history. You don't need a science degree to understand most of these issues sufficiently to legislate them. But you need humility and a willingness to learn. That, sadly, is lacking in too many governments and civil services.
Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police departments) understand these issues perfectly well.
Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police departments) understand these issues perfectly well.
Surely some of them understand the technical details. That doesn't necessarily mean they understand or respect the wider implications of a policy. This is why it's important to have a government that sets policy - taking into account all of the competing influences and potential consequences - and politically neutral technicians who then implement government policy.
No-one would dispute that if the government could examine every communication everyone ever sends then it could catch more very bad people and prevent more harm to innocent people. The problem is all the other stuff that also happens if you give a government that kind of power over its own people.
I find it odd that the article makes almost zero mention of how Ireland is doing with its very closely related form of Gaelic. Ireland has arguably been at least slightly more successful.
Or Wales? Or other minority languages, such as Basque? Just nothing -- not a mention.
Ireland is awkward: there are state policies and all, but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people. Scottish Gaelic is much better preserved in the communities, and Welsh is basically doing fine (hundreds of thousands of speakers), so it can be argued that the situation on the ground in the three communities is very different to touch upon in a smallish article.
// but the language as taught in schools and universities is quite different from the varieties spoken inside Gaelic-speaking communities (gaeltachta) by a very small number of people
There's only 3 regional dialects of Irish - Connacht, Munster and Ulster - and all three dialects are tested at Aural level in the School leavers Exam. There's very little difference between them bar pronunciation and some common phrases.
The vast vast majority of daily Irish speakers would speak Connacht Irish - i.e. Connemara Irish - due to spending time in the Colaiste Gaeilge during the summer holidays; effectively state-subsidised Irish language Summer Camps. It's also the predominant dialect on TG4 - the Irish language TV station.
Wales has a massively larger proportion of native speakers of Welsh daily, but this is due to the lack of colonial history attempting to wipe out the language, and the far more multi-cultural make-up of Ireland.
The thing is that there's not really any Munster Gaeltachts outside of Corca Dhuibhne in 2025. The only time you'll hear anything close to the differentiated Munster Irish outside of a Leaving Cert textbook is someone like Jack O'Connor giving commentary on TG4 after a match.
I'd also disagree with a lot of the sentence structure formation and 'grammar' espoused as fact on that Wiki page. You'd be marked down on any Irish Higher Level Paper 2 marking scheme that I'm aware of - e.g.
More to the point, I'd emphasise the far larger impact of Gaeilge on the dialect of Hiberno-English spoken down there - e.g. 'What mood are you in', 'I've the hunger of the world on me', 'I'm after having a fierce supper there' etc...
I absolutely understand that, but it seems concerned with the same things (preserving a minority language) and there are lots of initiatives in this area all over the U.K. Literally, right next door.
Really the article - despite the headline - spends a long time on the literary history of gaelic in scotland, with a short paragraph at the end on the current status. I doubt the author had time to expand to a review of minority language measures globally, and it didn’t seem to be the main point of it anyway.
And, the situation and standing of gaelic in Ireland and Scotland are quite different. In Ireland, gaelic is strongly associated with the primary, and successful ethnonationalist movement. In Scotland, at the end of the day gaelic is a remnant of a foreign invasion, and is also historically associated with catholicism, so is often seen as the “other”. This makes it more difficult to whip up enthusiasm to learn it, even among die hard Scottish nationalists. This whole situation is quite unlike Ireland and even Wales, it would be at best a distraction in the article.
Gaelic arrived in Scotland within 100 years of English arriving in England. They are both attested to arrive in around the 4th - 5th AD century IIRC. Before that Scotland spoke Pictish (which is not known in the modern era and may/maynot have been a Brythonic language) and a language related to Welsh in the Lowlands. Gaelic is a very interesting language and should absolutely get championed and preserved, but it is not the ancient language of Scotland, and hasn't really been spoken there much longer than the English language was in the UK.
You can't expect consistently accurate reporting on Ireland, I certainly wouldn't expect it from the BBC Eamonn growing up during the tail end of the Troubles. ;)
Honestly, while effort has been put in over a longer period of time in Ireland, from the outside looking in, Wales has been far more successful than Ireland. Despite being Irish and living in Ireland all my life, I know more people fluent in Welsh than in Irish. Maybe I just have severe sampling bias with my Welsh friends and colleagues?
The existence of a dialect continuum doesn't make them the same language. By that logic, Dutch and German are the same.
Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible. It's very annoying when people use the word "Gaelic" because I never know which language they're referring to. Just say "Scottish"/"Scottish Gaelic", "Irish", or "The Gaelic languages".
Yeah, to a degree, my dad speaks Irish and he says the same. But it's not quite enough to be considered the same language. It's comparable to Norwegian and Swedish, or Portuguese and Spanish.
Irish speaker here who has attempted to learn some Scottish Gaelic, and currently lives in Denmark, I think the Norwegian-Swedish comparison is probably apt. Although I think Irish/Scottish Gaelic are possibly even more divergent than that.
Side note: as an Irish speaker, reading Manx Gaelic, with its Welsh/English derived spelling system feels like what I imagine having a stroke feels like.
> Side note: as an Irish speaker, reading Manx Gaelic, with its Welsh/English derived spelling system feels like what I imagine having a stroke feels like.
Ha! That's a great description for how completely unsettling reading Manx is.
> Irish and Scottish are very similar, but they are not mutually intelligible. It's very annoying when people use the word "Gaelic" because I never know which language they're referring to. Just say "Scottish"/"Scottish Gaelic", "Irish", or "The Gaelic languages".
Are they American? Then they mean Irish.
Are they Scottish? Then they mean Scottish Gaelic.
Are they Irish? Trick question, Irish people don't use the word.
Northern (Donegal) Irish is to some extent mutually intelligible with Scottish, but it is very different from the eastern and southern varieties. The notion of the dialect "continuum" is a bit misleading here since the three varieties of Irish have been separated by English speaking regions for some time, and there are no intermediate forms.
So, I saw this link and immediately thought, "I bet the discussion will be about how we should use N100s, instead." I wasn't disappointed. Even on dedicated Pi forums, you see that happening.
I guess I understand this point of view if you were trying to use Pis to experiment with Kubernetes or something. You'd have built your own (desktop) PC or a personal server rack for that kind of thing, years ago. But for the vast majority of typical uses (Home Assistant, VPNs, etc.) a Pi is going to be way more than you need. It will sit there and silently and reliably run, for years at a time, powered by a USB cable. I know mine have.
Why would I consider replacing those with a bigger box, fan noise and a power brick? Maybe I'm missing something?
I think the reality is that a lot of people don’t use or care for the main Pi features like the GPIO pins or camera connectors, and aren’t using them in places where space or power is constrained. They’re purely looking for a cheap amount of compute.
For those use cases, it makes sense that performance per dollar is the top metric that many people look for. Pi used to be king there too, but as Pi prices have gone up and the price of other cheap compute has come down, it’s harder to justify the Pi. The Pi is still a great board, but a Pi5 with case, power supply, SD card will run you $100+ (throw in an SSD and you’re at $200+ easy), meanwhile an N100 PC can be had for the same price.
It's kind of like a keyboard without LED lights for status, pop up tabs for the angle, and a recessed guide for the USB cable. Would it technically be cheaper without those things? Sure... but it also costs next to nothing to add them. Once a keyboard gets to $10 almost all of the cost is already put into "being the best keyboard for $10".
There are certainly cheaper, <$100 TCO, alternatives to the Pi or N100 PCs... but they are accordingly worse performing. One thing Pi is really good at is having well supported options on the ultra low end. The Pi Zero 2W for $15 - it's crap performance but cheap. The Pi Pico microcontroller starts at $4 if you don't need a full OS (or just need to augment an existing box with GPIO over USB). If you're building a PC out of a Pi it's just not a differentiated option vs an actual PC is all.
I think software compatibility and power supply are two major issues. Non-x86 boards generally only run manufacturer supplied outdated Kernel, and x86 units are often only compatible with included AC supply.
Devices that solves both of those problems tend not to be price competitive with Pi, and many ends up paying for a Pi.
N100 are often no fan and the power brick need not be much different than the one that feeds the Pi. At the end of the day the max wattages aren't much different.
The biggest thing the Pi line gets you is good GPIO and premade hats using it (with prepackaged OS images). If you're just running standard software like a home assistant or VPN then it doesn't make much sense. Doubly so on articles about OCing it.
I think a lot of people on the internet try to use the Pi as a home media server or file store and can’t envision it being used for anything else.
It’s versatile but really it has always sucked at those things. Yes, get a used N100 if that’s your goal.
The Pi shines in education and as an embedded device where power, size and maintainability are important. I spotted one the other day in one of those presses that crush pennies as a souvenir. It displayed an instructional video on a screen and also seemed to control the card reader device on the front. Why would you use a N100 in that context?
2W, maybe. Pico, no. Driving a payment system and displaying an interactive video is still a job for a SBC not a microprocessor, even a modern one.
Raspberry Pi have found a price level and form factor that works for customers. The raw speed of the 5 is probably overkill for most user applications (the 4 is too IMO) - though edge AI and robotics need it, so there is demand. But ultimately the speed is there because a faster ARM chip fits within the cost-power-size requirements of the board.
Pico was meant to shine for much of the education half (e.g. micro-python controlled mini robots without the hassle of complex and poorly supported developer environments, OS management and configuration, or hardware complexity at a couple $ cost point), not the interactive media half (which would target the Zero 2W usage case over a full blown PC style Pi).
The compute module variants do tend to shine in the edge robotics niche where you need to do some processing in a custom form factor and don't want to design or source a SoC directly... but you don't really need the "rest of the PC" the standard Pi models provide. Pis (any model) are a bit of a shit fit for edge AI in general though. The memory bandwidth is god awful (even compared to cheaper SBCs) and the hardware to meaningfully offload matrix operations just isn't there like it is in a lot of other embedded boards fit for purpose. This leaves you spending more $ to use more Watts for less AI compute vs typical embedded AI options.
The Pi foundation's big break was targeting ultra low cost markets (i.e. sub $50 TCO) with a well supported device that has/had a lot of hacker community mindshare. Any product they've made beyond that focus (i.e. not the embedded or microcontroller variants) has been a pretty bad technology fit which ends up in more drawers than deployments despite the hype.
And they sold NUCs to ASUS. For mini PC servers I would always go intel for QVS transcoding. AMD is not on the same level as Intels media engine.
Intels iGPUs also support SR-IOV these days so you can get GPU acceleration to multiple VMs.
Streaming (local network - Sunshine/Moonlight) these days is really good. So good I consider moving my gaming machine to the garage and just stream it to a thin client or steam deck.
I think I've been operating this way for a long time: My notes, software and wiki are almost all in plain text -- source, markdown or org mode in Emacs, usually -- and open image/video formats (jpeg, mp4) and synced with a replaceable combination of services (git, Dropbox, Syncthing, etc.). It lets me switch the conduits/pipes regularly, to whatever works best for my needs at the time.
When the zombie apocalypse finally hits (or the Internet implodes), I still have everything important, in plain text.
https://github.com/jgunthorpe/cloud_mdir_sync/issues/25
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