Typewriter General

I can just easily prove you wrong. Most newer cars are not user servicable. In fact the majority of machines are highly proprietary (what is a patent?) and you would get sued to death by the manufacturers if you tried to copy them. Many require proprietary tools to work with. Literally any scientific instrument.

Most newer cars contain proprietary software that makes them non-libre. Its a false equivalence, you can still service a modern Civic yourself, in fact, you can replace the ECU with an aftermarket ECU with FOSS firmware

You're just straight up making arguments by assertions at this point, which is dubious. Even if a machine is made of proprietary screw threading or gearing, there are still tools available to machine your own screws and gears to replace them. A machine, by design, cannot be closed source

Your mail is being read and resealed by the post office. Don't use the post office? Well Fedex does it too. There probably isn't a mail agency out there that doesn't read your mail.

Unless you hand deliver it's all botnet. Even then there are those drones now that can fly extremely high in the sky but still get HD photos of a dime on the ground.

I'll stick with a printer for now. Thanks.

Its simple, we train carrier pigeons. No more botnet. Or alternatively we start our own independent vigilante drone courier service. Although the government might try to track us down

A thing that only lasts about 20 years, in contrast to the absurd perpetual lengths of copyright. And OP is talking about 1960s tech.

>>>/g/

Here's my blog, ignore it.

I grew up with bad handwritting so I was forced to hand write but also type all my school assignments. Because my family was poor I used an old Sears typewriter for a long time, it was rusty and the spacebar was missing so you have to hit the medal bar underneath, before I used it the thing was stored in my damp garage which is why it was rusty and hard to use, pressing the keys was tough to begin with but the ink ribbon was also very old, in order to leave a proper mark I had to punch the keys hard, since I was just a little kid I had to use my index and middle fingers because of the force needed and the spacing of the keys, a normal typing style was impossible. I didn't get an electronic typewritter until years later but that manual typewriter fucked up my typing style forever, I still type only using a subset of my fingers most of the time.

a.pomf.cat/pxelgx.mp4

I wish I could change my style but it seems impossible with decades of muscle memory, I might be bound to this style forever. Every now and then I make attempts to switch but I never stick with it.

Try learning Dvorak or another layout, the fact that you have to be concious of each key that you're pressing makes it easy to enforce good habits. I only did it out of curiosity, but it has improved my typing markedly, even in qwerty.

Every modern printer attaches microscopic metadata to the page.

So my problem is not so much the layout, I know where every key on the keyboard is and can hit them without looking, even on other unfamiliar boards, the issue is mostly the relation of fingers. For instance something like 'p' is still assigned to the right index finger in my mind much like most keys are, I can type in a homerow style but I have to stop my instincts of lifting my hand and focus on fingers I'm not used to using. Other problems are symbols and numbers, it's much easier for me to type them in my way than with the homerow, some symbols make me contort my hand too in a weird way.

In my experience the homerow seems like it would be much faster for words (and much less error prone) if I could get it down but it's hard to force myself.

Thinking about it switching the layouts would force me to conform where sticking with qwerty does not, if I just stick to qwerty I can change styles instantly but changing the layout requires a little bit more than that. I'll give it a try, thanks user.

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I'm not complaining, I'm just saying such a feat seems impossible. More importantly I'm not sure if it will actually be beneficial, it'd be unfortunate if I invested the time only to end up at the same error percentages and/or wpm.

Also how does one go about retraining a skill that is used daily? This seems similar to switching handedness but without being forced too.

ed is free, and good enough for me!
I shitpost from teletype and browse with lynx -dump

Also I should mention that I usually post about this in hopes of suggestions, not to whine about it, there's nothing inherently wrong with the way I type it's just potentially not optimal. It's embarrassing to be employed in a job where I type most of the day and be sub-optimal.

I'm really tired so I'm probably wording my sentences very poorly too, they may come across in a way I don't intend.

Generally it's a matter of switching and eating the diminished capacity for as long as it takes to get the skill back to an acceptable level. (See: people who snap up the wrist of their dominant hand, or that one guy who trained himself to ride a bicycle with the handlebars turning in the opposite direction just 'cause.) If you don't think it'll be beneficial that's cool, but it IS possible. Hell, if you can achieve 60-70wpm with your current method then you're probably right about minimal benefit since most people need to specifically train to get above that anyway.

That's true I shouldn't say impossible, just tough. It seems much harder for me to switch styles than it is for people to switch layouts, since switching from something like qwerty to Dvorak, Colemak, etc. keeps the same hand position but changes the letters underneath, for me I'd have to change my hands not just the keys.

The other thing is programs, shortcuts, chording, hotkeys, etc. don't seem to fit well into a homerow style where they do with me.

Neither of these are meant as an excuse, just consideration points, I don't know if it's actually faster my way since I have no comparison point but I have observed points in my attempts that seem like they'd be worse no matter what, that very well may be my board though, I should probably get a smaller one and then consider it again, maybe my finger length is more to blame than anything else, hard to say.

Depending on the context I can be anywhere from 60 to 90. Re-typing (looking at text while typing somewhere else) is the slowest for me, dictation is faster than that but if I know what I'm going to write it's much faster. The reason for the variation is mostly corrections, while I can type quickly I make a lot of mistakes, they're quick to fix but I have to see my output.

Interesting, I might look into what this entails.

If you have nothing to say, why are you trying so hard to hide it?

Incidentally typewriters did give people a privacy scare when they first came out in the late 1800s to early 1900s because family members who lived in more remote parts of the country were receiving highly personal messages on typewritten paper in the mail and a lot of people still thought you had to use a printing press to get printed text like that. Which required a third party to read a written message and then print it themselves.

Why bother with an ancient mechanical typewriter that probably doesn't work anymore when you can perfect your handwriting and write everything?

Typing produces more professional looking documents and is potentially faster than writing. A manual typewriter can ve safely expected to last a very long time, no electricity is required and most are built to last

With today's technology it should be easy to botnet even a mechanical typewriter. Use the a similar concept as the Soviets but use piezo tubes connected to the different stamps to catch the signal. The only escape form the botnet is to build your own botnet before (((they))) do.

I sometimes can't read my own hand writing ;-;

Botnet needs network connection, even if it's something like sneakernet with USB keys. You don't have that on a typewritter. You have a dude who types and that's it, no way to alter the behavior of the machine.
Sure, you can fingerprint the machine's output maybe, and thus identify it (as you can with a gun, for example). But you can't control it, so it's not botnet.

as I recall, the key left an impression on the ribbon and they managed to find what was typed through that.

Don't lull yourself into a false sense of security.

I've been wanting to pick up a few for document production after SHTF, but haven't yet done so.

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What did they measure typing speed in, words per month?

I also switched to Dvorak and stuck with it for over a year. Biggest ass rape I've ever endured. It's all a fucking bullshit scam.

Too be fair, in Chinese an entire word and even abstract concepts can be represented with a single character. So their WPM is probably faster than when using alphabets

Alphabets on the other hand are more versatile

True, but with alphabets you also have a significantly smaller number of characters, meaning you can type stuff without having to hover over a massive grid with a magnifying glass spending 20 minutes or more trying to find the exact character you need to type.

Why would they even make something so convoluted? It would have been much faster for them to just write everything, or at the very least make the typewriter much larger so they could still have actual keys.

At least chinks even have a written language at all.

What would a typical African typewriter look like?

A rotten stick and a pile of mud and feces would be my best guess.

Its actually incredible how big a difference something as mundane as a language could have on technological advancement

Its why the Chinese didn't develop typewriters until the 1940s, although before this the printing press served them well

A row of hammers strike a series of tied down slave women who are instructed to shout a word when hit

Install edbrowse

What makes you think the 3d printer will not insert nanomachine spy bots into your newly printed typewriter?

reccomendations for improving handwriting?

Become an autistic girl.

So what typewriters do you own?

I'll start

y-you know the typing of the dead was release windows-native, right?

Why bother

Real freedom comes from pens: too cheap, simple and undistinguishable for botneting.
You can end up knowing what is writing with nanomachines the NSA injects into ink, but you can't know who wrote it, people can use any pen ever.
Same with pencil.

What I'd like, though, is a free way of using ink that's more or less like parker roller pens. For being proprietary shit they write really well.

I don't think I could find an English download for it and my Japanese isn't good enough yet.

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Pens also offer unlimited unicode support and emoticons galore!

Individual handwriting styles are essentially unique and unchangeable, even if you try writing in a different style or language. Government agencies have long experience tracking down individuals due to handwriting - this is why ransom notes where frequently made using cut-out letters from magazines or newspapers.

Except there have been people forging handwriting of others since the invention of writing...

Forging signatures, yes. Forging large blocks of text is much more difficult and much easier to spot, especially if you have a known good sample of writing from the individual.

A heap of scrap
youtube.com/watch?v=ffXsCCo8OCw

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You have cute hands, user :3

Oh, thank you.
a.pomf.cat/oymnah.MP4