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micv

241 karma · joined February 15, 2013

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micv··on 1991's PC technology was unbelievable (2011)
I don't think it's fair to ding an early 80s platform for not caring about IBM compatibility. It wasn't anywhere near as dominant a standard then as it is now.

The Amiga couldn't talk to a PC screen with any amount of pin adapters anyway. It used a different frequency, which is seriously aggravating today if you want to fire up an old Amiga for nostalgia's sake.

It could read DOS discs with a driver iirc but the PC definitely couldn't read Amiga discs. It got extra capacity out of them (720k vs 880k) but at a definite cost in compatibility.

micv··on M1 Mac Mini Teardown
I suppose it's less likely to go off like a Note 7 if it's not attached to the computer and in use. Otherwise, no idea.
micv··on M1 Mac Mini Teardown
The 16" MBP has the biggest lithium battery you can have and still fly on US planes:

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...

micv··on Intel's disruption is now complete
I'm using a MacBook Pro with an Intel 10nm part in it. The 4 port 13" MBP still comes with one. I think the MacBook Air might have had a 10nm part before it went ARM, too.

There are still no 10nm parts for the desktop or the high-end/high-TDP laptops anyway afaik.

micv··on Leaked Apple ARM CPU benchmark beats Intel Core i9 16-inch MacBook Pro
The A14X is a part for tablets that have very little cooling capacity and run on battery most of the time. It's not really comparable to the 5600X that has higher power consumption than the entire iPad Pro the chip will end up in.
micv··on AMD Announces Ryzen “Zen 3” and Radeon “RDNA2” Presentations for October
Their Windows drivers are a pain as well, to be honest. I've had more than a few blue screens from various versions of their drivers over the last few years.
micv··on Intel Launches 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake
The size and weight of CRTs was basically unbearable. Huge problems. You can give up a lot to get out from that, and most CRTs weren't that sort of high quality. Most of us lost nothing but a huge inconvenience when we moved from CRT to LCD/TFT/whatever.
micv··on I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action
What part of being heavily opposed to homophobic organisation is degenerate in your opinion?
micv··on The Super Duper Universal Binary
Most applications are distributed that way. Some have more complicated, Windows-style installers (PKG files) because they need to do things like install kernel extensions or what have you before they'll work.
micv··on Reddit shuts down subreddits including r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse
Yeah, it turns out that most people don't want to go swimming through a cesspit for entertainment after all.
micv··on Modern C++ Won't Save Us
It's a bit better with C++11 syntax where you can use = delete to remove the default constructors/destructors, e.g.:

  class Class
  {
      Class();
      Class(const Class&) = delete;
      Class& operator = (const Class&) = delete;
      ~Class() = default;
  };
Which I find slightly cleaner than the old approach of declaring them private and not defining an implementation, but the concept hasn't changed much. I'd love a way to say 'no, compiler, I'll define the constructors, operators, and destructors I want - no defaults' but that's not part of the standard.

Move constructors are an extra that, if I remember correctly, don't get a default version, thankfully.

micv··on U.S. Secretly Halted JPMorgan’s Growth for Years
The Great Depression II was on the cards in 2007/2008 before governments took on gargantuan debts to brush it under the carpet. We're all paying for that with governments straining under comically heavy debt loads and interest rates held stupidly low long-term to avoid bankrupting the banks. The last thing we should be doing is allowing the same corrupt institutions which created the crisis loose to do it all over again. It will all just happen again with no room for manoeuvre left.
micv··on Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S
The east coast mainline has been a mess for years. Virgin were the second franchise to collapse and the only one that seems to have worked was the nationalised franchise that came between them.
micv··on Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S
UK public transport is a disaster in its own right. It turns out that privatisation doesn't really help that much, especially when it's done in a way that basically gives you the worst parts of state ownership combined with the worst parts of private ownership. If you look to the continent you'll find systems that work a whole hell of a lot better.
micv··on New Google Pixel 3, Pixel Slate, and Home Hub
There's not much in it really. Looking at UK prices, the Pixel 3 is £11 cheaper than the iPhone XR which is basically nothing when you're talking about a £700+ phone. The XL is a hundred quid or so cheaper than the iPhone XS which is a bit more meaningful.

To balance that, they only promise three years of software updates. It'd be treated as an absolute scandal if an iPhone was dropped that quickly.

micv··on Microsoft suspends Windows 10 update, citing data loss reports
Windows 7 is pretty close to EOL now. Companies might not have migrated off it yet, but they're going to have basically no choice in short order. I doubt Microsoft are going to suddenly change how they handle updating the OS in the next year or so -- at the end of the day, there's no real competition for the business desktop -- so I expect we all have some fun and games to look forward to.
micv··on Microsoft is embracing Android as the mobile version of Windows
Gmail's labels have always been an arse to map on to normal IMAP-based email.
micv··on iOS 12 Core ML Benchmarks
> let's not forget it's primarily a factor of Apple using batteries that lose a significant percentage of their capacity after 2 years in the iPhones

As far as I can tell this simply isn't true. My iPhone SE is at 89% of maximum capacity after 2.5 years of very regular use. It's standing up pretty well.

micv··on Intel can’t supply 14nm Xeons, HPE recommends AMD Epyc
Opteron servers were the absolute business for a few years in the mid/late 2000s. They were a preferred supplier for a few years while Intel wallowed. 2002 was before my time, but that was the era of SPARC in the business I work in.
micv··on Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
That's a thousand dollar for hardware that's years out of date. It's a terrible deal. You're going to be far better off buying a decent Windows laptop.
micv··on Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK
You don't get a medal for being a Russian asset unless you're in Russia.
micv··on Getting 1Password 7 ready for the Mac App Store
They're still selling standalone versions for MacOS & Windows that run off local storage. Doesn't seem like they're doing multi-OS license bundles anymore, though, so it's gonna run expensive if you use more than one OS.
micv··on Gruber on the Macbook Pro Keyboard
I have the same MBP and the keyboard is still working great despite my taking exceptionally poor care of it (multiple drink spills). I've not heard any buzz about HW failure rates with that model so I think you might just be unlucky.
micv··on Apple Reports First Quarter Results
It's not really a like for like comparison. The S8 has been out for a while and has had its price cut down as a result. You always get better value for money if you stay slightly behind the curve and don't buy the fanciest, newest thing going.

The iPhone X price is still ridiculous, don't get me wrong, but Samsung phones are pretty damned expensive on launch, too.

micv··on Intel Has a Big Problem
They produce Xeon chips with dozens of cores forked off the same architecture, so that wasn't too surprising. Sticking to four cores was probably just market segmentation, like not supporting ECC memory in the consumer line, to protect Xeon sales.
micv··on AIM will shut down after 20 years
I suspect the answer is money. Well-funded corporations can and do push their fancy, new messaging platforms hard enough to crowd out any emerging open standard, but they certainly have no intention of paying anything more than lip service to the idea of interoperability. They want to own all of this and turn it into cold, hard cash. Who's going to develop the next big, open standard when WhatsApp can turn into billions of dollars?
micv··on MacOS High Sierra
The iPad Air only has 1GB of RAM. I've always suspected it would age badly because of that.
micv··on Vast deposits of lithium could change the global politics of battery production
That's interesting. The non-recyclable waste is normally packaged up into black bags here in the UK and it's often pretty noxious. They're not gonna slice them open so a camera can have a look, so people can put almost anything in them so long as it fits.
micv··on Vast deposits of lithium could change the global politics of battery production
It's not like they can really inspect the contents of your bin before the machinery dumps it all into the truck. You'd have to do something really dumb to get caught. Those rules really depend on most people not being dicks about it.
micv··on Life Is About to Get Harder for Websites Without HTTPS
Seems like something that should tie onto the public/private network distinction that Windows makes, though I can't remember ever seeing it in other OSes.
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