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walterbell

98,246 karma · joined May 25, 2014

“You see, when you open new doors, there is a price to pay. Now imagine... tonight, you look under your bed, and, lo and behold, you find a monster! And you're immediately eaten. Now, if you hadn't looked for the monster, you wouldn't have found it and you'd still be happy in your beds, instead of being slowly digested in the stomach sack of the creature. But, with any luck, your sister or your brothers might have heard your screams, and your endeavor will serve as a valuable lesson to them.”

—Walter Bishop, "Fringe"

“Only those who could risk going too far can possibly know how far they can go.”

—William Bell, "Fringe"

submissionscomments
walterbell··on How to Exist
> all

All minus 13, https://www.fanbolt.com/161001/pluribus-explained-how-the-hi...

  the hive mind’s biggest weakness might just be the concept of “or” in a world that only understands “and.”
walterbell··on How to Exist
> 150 years of time controlling your action

   15 years of social distracting your timed   action
    1 years of agents driving     your untimed action
walterbell··on Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly
HP offered FreeDOS as an OS option.
walterbell··on US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek, more than 100 firms deemed security risks
> US. has held off adding.. memory chipmaker CXMT

Since CXMT was _not_ blacklisted, this is good for global RAM supply.

walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
Thanks for the pointer.
walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
See Chemistrie, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427032
walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
Lower ambient light, including dark mode, leads to pupil dilation, which is a loss of about 0.5 diopters.

Higher ambient light with low-blue content (from lights and screens), where the room and screen are matched has several benefits.

Natural light is always best and only light mode screens can match natural light.

walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
Progressives maximize legal compliance for automobile driving, with bonus impact on optical industry profits.

Multiple lenses for different focal lengths are now affordable and practical and offer higher optical quality and more comfort.

walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
The human brain mostly adapts. Big Optical makes $$$$ billions. A small percentage of human brains have persistent dizziness and depth perception errors, which can lead to physical injury and reduced quality of life. We don't have yet have a test funded by disablity insurance, which can determine which brains might fail to adapt.

The good news is that multiple glasses have never been cheaper or more accessible, so progressives are entirely a choice.

walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
Search for "Chemistrie" magnetic lens attachment in +0.5 increments. They can even stack for different focal lengths, e.g. reading vs computer screen at 36". Magnets embed in primary glasses. Expensive via local opticians, they will retrofit via mail order and buychemistrie dot com.
walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
Search HN for "ABBE". The very cheapest material has the highest optical quality. Thinner ones are for weight, which matters if you have strong prescriptions. Weight can also be countered with a smaller frame height/width, which might require a vintage or designer frame, but that's a one time cost that can used with cheaper and higher optical quality lens replacements.
walterbell··on Aging and Eye Problems
FDA approved red light therapy. About USD $100 for device.
walterbell··on Micron Virginia expansion advances DDR4 memory made in the USA
This is for US-strategic industrial use cases with long lifecycles due to certification requirements.

  The 1α DRAM node is the most advanced memory technology ever produced in the United States and is well suited to long-lifecycle memory for critical applications, including DDR4 and LP4 products.
walterbell··on Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)
Similarly, https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/24/los-gatos-netflix-headquar... (with trail photo)

> One place where you’d always find someone from Netflix: the Los Gatos Creek Trail, a paved walking path right behind the office. “We would take our one-on-one [meetings] by just walking out of the building, down to the river, up to the reservoir and back, chatting,” .. Among the people frequently seen on the trail.. was [Reed] Hastings himself. That walk-and-talk tradition is still alive: On a recent spring day, it took just a few minutes after arriving for two people to emerge from Netflix’s office complex to stroll alongside the water, deep in discussion.

walterbell··on Magical Realism: “Northern Exposure” 25 Years Later (2015)
Full series currently on Prime/iTunes for $20, with ~80% of the original music.
walterbell··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
Yes, Linux developers are officially supported by both Apple and Microsoft, with Microsoft developers being a major contributor to upstream Linux and WSL2 having grown into a capable Linux development environment.
walterbell··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
Apple Macbooks support virtualization of Linux on MacOS.
walterbell··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
Also keeps lawyers busy.
walterbell··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
Asahi focusing on M1 would also encourage secondary market sales of M1 laptops, which are already a primary competitor (see Apple marketing) to current Apple laptops. If Apple wanted to encourage Asahi Linux users to move from M1 or Qualcomm to M5/M6 Apple devices, they could improve device firmware compatibility with Linux, or contribute directly to mainline Linux.
walterbell··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
> bit of a red herring

It offers an A/B test of "similar" SoC performance and battery life (which users now expect from laptops), without a vertically integrated operating system that was also created by the company who designed the SoC.

walterbell··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
Circular talent economy, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/legendary-qu...

  Just several months after leaving Qualcomm, distinguished CPU and system architects Gerard Williams, John Bruno, and Ram Srinivasan, who are celebrated for their high-performance processors developed at Apple, Nuvia, and, more recently, Qualcomm, established a new CPU startup — Nuvacore — that promises no less than to 'rewrite the rules of silicon.'
walterbell··on iOS 18.7.3-18.7.6 were withheld from most devices; iOS 18.7.7 is enabled for all
A declared winner in the tug-of-war between commercial interests (forced bundling of Vision Pro headset and future smart glasses features into phone and tablets), security of individual users (heretofore claimed as a numerically small subset), collective resistance of users to unwanted UX, national and class-action groups with lawyers to opine on the security of their clients.
walterbell··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
How does Ubuntu Linux on recent Qualcomm (ex-Apple Nuvia) Arm laptops compare to Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon?
walterbell··on MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be
So much talent, resources and yet-to-be-realized potential already proven by those who have unshackled iPads to use JIT and VMs. In this golden CLI age of LLMs, Apple ships some of the world's best silicon (e.g. M5) for local LLMs on iPad, but it's actively prevented by Apple leadership from running performant CLI apps.
walterbell··on MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be
Coming soon to Macbooks, now that Apple's in-house modem removes the need to give Qualcomm a percentage of retail sales price.

iPads offer $2/GB prepaid US data via eSIM.

walterbell··on MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be
They will if/when Google does, which may happen this year.
walterbell··on MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be
Partially there on Android Pixels with "Linux Terminal". With the rumored convergence of ChromeOS and Android, it should be possible to have a desktop ChromeOS pKVM VM with accelerated vGPU graphics on Android mobile devices that have enough RAM.
walterbell··on MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be
When Google ships unified ChromeOS+Android on pKVM on ex-Apple Qualcomm laptops from Dell/HP/Lenovo, Apple executives will have a market-driven reason to make this change. Some iPad improvements appeared after Microsoft shipped Surface 2-in-1.
walterbell··on MacBook Neo and How the iPad Should Be
With smart glasses too, another potential Apple product.
walterbell··on MacBook Neo and How the iPad Should Be
Apple iPad Pro can copy the unification of ChromeOS+Android on Arm (ex-Apple Qualcomm) laptops from Dell, Lenovo, HP.
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