Review

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon Excalidraw, which is a whiteboarding/diagramming tool that has a certain aesthetic. I liked the design of the diagrams I saw, so I decided to give it a try. Coming from drawio, I was immediately impressed with how intuitive it felt. After playing around with Excalidraw for an hour, I decided it was worth actually using for work, and so I hosted it locally on my machine. The setup was pretty easy to do; clone the repository, install the alarmingly many dependencies1, build the app, and then grab the static files from excalidraw-app/build and shove them behind a web server. Read more...

Earlier this month Google announced a software update to the Pixel 4a, under the Pixel 4a Battery Performance Program. This comes after going without any software update since 2023. For users of the Pixel 4a, this update claimed to “improve the stability of their battery’s performance”. However, for some devices, this update would have negative effects which “reduced available battery capacity and impacts charging performance”. For devices that are negatively impacted, Google would offer a battery replacement or monetary compensation where a replacement is not possible. The press coverage on the announcement was met with skepticism and so was the general opinion on social media and forums. I, on the other hand, was hopeful. After all, the announcement says the update will mean the battery performance would be the same as before, and if not, your phone is an “Impacted Device” which Google is already aware of and would offer a replacement for. Read more...