Hmm. I'm at least partly interested because I once lived, worked, and studied in Chapel Hill. But that's now a long time ago.

And I no longer have any real contacts with UNC or Chapel Hill.

@derobert So, I talked to ThermoWorks. Twice. They were quite helpful. The second time, the lady I spoke to remembered I had spoke to Karsten (or Carsten?) the first time, and transferred to him. This sort of thing doesn't happen in India.

Does anyone have a recommendation for syncing phone contacts across Android phones that doesn't involve giving Google all your contacts?

@StephenKitt Thank you very much. Are these both available as Android Apps? And do you have an Android phone?

@FaheemMitha I have an Android phone, yes; Radicale runs on a server somewhere, and I use DAVx⁵ on the phone; Syncthing runs on all the peers, and is available on Android.

DAVx⁵ provides account synchronisation, in the same way as Google account synchronisation, so all applications accessing the calendar etc. on the phone see the information hosted on Radicale.

@StephenKitt And how much of your information gets copied somewhere in the cloud? That's the part that sticks in my craw.

@FaheemMitha none, it gets copied to a machine I own and run.

@StephenKitt So you've got to set things up so it can copy to the machine, I suppose.

You should write a tutorial.

@FaheemMitha it’s been done by others, e.g. enricozini.org/blog/2014/radicale-davdroid (old but still relevant).

@StephenKitt I'll take a look. Thanks.

And is this all Android-specific?

@FaheemMitha no, the only Android-specific part is DAVx⁵.

@StephenKitt Oh. Ok.

My desktop calendar and contacts connect to Radicale too, and various computers in the household sync using Syncthing.

In a family it’s quite handy: we have a shared “family” calendar, and we can all see each other’s individual calendars.

@StephenKitt These programs should be better known. I didn't see them when I did a search.

It was a total Googlefest.

At one time groupware was a somewhat popular category of software, but now that phones sync on their own to whatever cloud service they depend on, most people don’t even know they should care...

@StephenKitt The big problem with the whole cloud thing is that you don't know who is seeing your data.

That's an issue even with a paid service. With a free service it's worse, by definition.

And one is seeing wholesale abandonment of rights to privacy everywhere. Let's hope we don't see the rise of some nasty fascists govts in the next few decades, or we're all in big trouble.

@StephenKitt That's a handy link. Thank you.

How do you use the "favourites" (the starring of questions)? I use it as a type of bookmark for questions I have to get back to to answer properly later. When I do get back to it and when I'm done with it, I un-star the question.

I'm not sure that's the way it's supposed to be used.

@Kusalananda I do the same... Sometimes for questions I’ve answered, too, if I suspect they might get deleted.

I believe there's a badge for getting a question starred by a lot of people (IIRC). If the stars are temporary bookmarks, it seems a bit odd to get a badge for that.

Maybe I'm misremembering. I haven't checked lately.

No, there's the "Favourite question" and "Stellar question" badges.

@Kusalananda yes, indeed; so our use only works in a fair manner if the number of hyperactive answerers remains small ;-).

@Kusalananda I use them to get updates on a question I want to see answers on.

@Kusalananda I do that (particularly for questions that I'd like to answer, but can't at the moment) cough*ed*cough and also for "questions" with answers that I like to refer back to. The former will have a temporary star while the latter sticks around. I haven't yet used it for derobert's purpose.

now I wonder if those 'star' badges get taken away if a question is on the cusp

though most of the ones I've starred are < 5 or > 30

/me feels a disturbance in the Force, a forthcoming SEDE query

or should that be SedE?

Q: Can I edit a SEDE question with ed?

the GUI textbox editor is truly inferior!

the SEDE query that bubbled into my brain was "I wonder which starred questions are starred because of answers -- ones with higher-voted Answers than the Question", but I suspect that's most of them.

@JeffSchaller use github.com/docwhat/itsalltext with ed ;-)

or rather, one of its replacements

what! "Edit textareas in your browser with your favorite editor!" awesome

wrap your head around a graphical browser's textbox wrapping ed

@JeffSchaller gone are the days of losing a long answer because you submit it just as Unix.SE goes down for maintenance

@JeffSchaller edugit.org/nik/itsallghosts should do the trick with ed

@StephenKitt ERR_NAME_RESOLUTION_FAILED

@JeffSchaller EITWORKSFORME

@StephenKitt E_TEMPORARY_FAILURE; downforeveryoneorjustme.com/edugit.org reports "It's just you"

bookmarked for a rainy day; thank you!

thanks for enabling my addiction hehe

Watch out, there always comes a day when dealers cash in on addictions...

"Jeff, I'm having trouble with this java constructor; do you think you can fix it with ed?"

Oh if you like development environments other than ed you’ll love this:

@StephenKitt not a developer (by trade) but I'll take a listen shortly!

@StephenKitt good talk! He won me over when he slammed vi

hah; somehow missed xkcd.com/1823 the first time around; the hovertext is fun, too

@StephenKitt It irritates me following Indian English webminars :( I usually give up sooner or later.

Though that guy accent is far much better than the usual.

I've voted to reopen unix.stackexchange.com/questions/497526/… on the possible misunderstanding that the OP wants to be able to use figlet foo unchanged, no matter whether figlet is installed or not.

@RuiFRibeiro "better"?

You should try following a presentation by someone from Newcastle, England if you think Indians are hard to understand.

But that guy's American, anyway.

@terdon or youtube.com/watch?v=XQCHoKAq9xA

@JeffSchaller heh :)

"please remain calm" :)

@terdon LOL...I was in holidays in Scotland a few years ago and managed it pretty well...though it seems the Loch Ness monster was in holidays, damn

Hardest ever training I ever had was from a Londoner, IBM

Though in Edinbourgh had to run over several times over my head what the waiter said when I arrived to understand he said "Got yourself a whiskey bottle, mate!" ;-P

Heh, and that's Edinborough. Glasgow is far, far worse.

@terdon did the whole round of those cities in that particular holidays. Ended up at Inverness.

@terdon unix.stackexchange.com/questions/497526 is not a dupe of unix.stackexchange.com/q/85249 ??!

It's pretty clearly not a duplicate to me

I just saw Jeff's commet above

And I agree.

Sorry for the noise.

What they said. And no worries :)

I thought questions were excluded from HNQ if they'd ever been closed, but that one just discussed is there now for some reason

A lot of answers too