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stuff4ben

3,275 karma · joined April 1, 2009

Software developer, (former) manager, SRE, DevSecOps, and part-time entrepreneur in RTP NC.

I am an IBM employee and my views and postings do not represent those of my employer.

Email my username @gmail.

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stuff4ben··on The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities
I kept my classic computers, 2 Commodore Amiga 500's. One worked, the other didn't after I cut a trace to the Agnus chip to increase the chip RAM to 1MB (or something like that). Anyways, I threw them away around the early 2000s because I was decluttering and I hadn't used them in quite a while. I still kick myself to this day for that. Also threw away a broken 1084s monitor (which was why I never used the amigas).
stuff4ben··on The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities
I have 2 kids in college and I'm trying to sell my house. So I've decluttered to make the house presentable and I'm waiting for my kids to graduate and get their own places so I can give them their crap back. Storage unit makes sense for me. But this is likely to last only 2-4 years and then I'll have downsized enough.
stuff4ben··on Giving up on smart rings
The OP mentions he switched to a Google FitBit Air which seems like an elastic cloth band which is all I want too, except I want it to operate like an Apple Watch in terms of integration with Apple Health. Anyone know if the FitBit Air and Apple Watch are similar in features?
stuff4ben··on iPhone Duo
> if anything Apple is catching up That's been Apple MO for a long time. They may not be the first to market on a new tech, but when they do deliver, it's more advanced and higher quality than the competitors. It's a good strategy IMO.
stuff4ben··on Apple debuts iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max
Apple iPhone Duo is out
stuff4ben··on Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada
Unfortunately I don't have electrical in my toilet closet in my master bath. I'd totally do it though.
stuff4ben··on New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro
Which is more important for AI/LLM stuff, the number of GPU cores or the amount of unified memory? I can choose from a Mini with the M5 Pro 18CPU/30GPU and 64GB RAM or a Studio with a M5 Max 18CPU/40GPU and 48GB RAM for roughly the same price
stuff4ben··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra for a big leap in performance and AI compute
True re: the Raspberry Pi, but I was thinking the 10Gbit Ethernet would allow more concurrent streaming in my household. But it's probably overkill.
stuff4ben··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
M5 Pro in a Mac Mini with 64GB RAM and 10Gbit Ethernet seems like the perfect Jellyfin server and Ollama test server. All for just over $3K (I specced with only 1TB local nvme).
stuff4ben··on Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers
I do like my Sonos setup (have a pair of Era300s, an Arc Ultra, Sub4, and Sub Mini) and now that they've fixed the app issues, it works really well. And the sound quality is good enough for me. I just wish the Amp product was about half the price. It doesn't do all that much more.
stuff4ben··on Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers
Doesn't look like the Amp50 is available to buy...
stuff4ben··on Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers
Whoa, yeah that does look very promising!!! Thanks!
stuff4ben··on CERN bids farewell to the LHC and enters Long Shutdown 3
Is that a thing? Can an organization be given sovereign immunity? I thought that was reserved for actual countries?
stuff4ben··on Pine64 launch $50 smart speaker for Home Assistant tinkerers
I really wish someone would come out with a $25 "box" that sits on top of my bookshelf speaker that allows me to Airplay to it and power said speaker with a ~50w class-D amp. Then if I have multiple ones, it would allow them to pair and setup stereo or surround sound. I might even pay $50 for it. Kinda like a Sonos Amp but not at that price point.
stuff4ben··on Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity
And also, how does one bend time?
stuff4ben··on Incident with Actions and Pages
Let us know when your infrastructure sees the load that Microsoft's does and how you've handled it.
stuff4ben··on Granite 4.1: IBM's 8B Model Matching 32B MoE
I listen to NPR daily and I don't think I've ever heard any of them use that phrasing.
stuff4ben··on Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)
First day on the Internet huh?
stuff4ben··on MacBook Neo
The A18Pro is a very powerful CPU, besting even the M1 in single-core performance (about even in multicore). Saying its just a "phone CPU" is disingenuous.
stuff4ben··on Men in their 50s may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemicals'
I love my Matfer Bourgeat carbon steel pan. It's just really heavy and kinda ugly. But it works great, especially at high temps when searing meats.
stuff4ben··on Men in their 50s may be aging faster due to toxic 'forever chemicals'
its highly unlikely any restaurant uses teflon coated pans. Most use carbon steel or stainless. Teflon just won't hold up in daily use at a restaurant.
stuff4ben··on I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
I put that into IBM's AskIBM Watson LLM and it replied with "This question is beyond my capability." Which to be fair, probably is.
stuff4ben··on TÜV Report 2026: Tesla Model Y has the worst reliability of all 2022–2023 cars (2025)
I find any report that lists Mini Cooper and Audi as the most reliable cars to immediately be suspect. I'm not a Tesla or Musk fan by any stretch of the imagination, but Mini and Audi are not known for reliability, at least in their ICE vehicles.
stuff4ben··on Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
Meh, I don't care much about control, I care more about getting my work done with the least amount of friction. Macs do that for me. Linux and Windows have too many barriers to make them a daily GUI driver.
stuff4ben··on Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
I haven't driven a Windows box since 2010 (and even then it was just a few months at work) and I'm perfectly happy! Except I'm on a Mac and have been at every job since 2006 when they came out with the Intel-based ones. I of course run Linux on VMs at work, but my daily driver has been and likely will forever be a Mac. I don't miss installing/tweaking video drivers or registry settings. Things just work 99.99% of the time for me. No one is perfect and Apple has made mistakes, but for me, I'm 100% satisfied.
stuff4ben··on The biggest CRT ever made: Sony's PVM-4300
$40k invested in AAPL in 1990 would be worth about $40m today. $40k is about what $100k is today. So what stock would you invest $100k in today, that in 35 years would give you a similar return?
stuff4ben··on He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over
what a waste of a life, I can't help but feel disgust.
stuff4ben··on IBM to acquire Confluent
it's a public company, read the quarterly reports
stuff4ben··on Show HN: Awesome J2ME
Startup I used to work at fueled Cingular's mobile storefront and distributed those J2ME games along with ringtones and graphics. Those were the days...
stuff4ben··on Hard drives on backorder for two years as AI data centers trigger HDD shortage
jobs...
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