zaphoyd

Apple has been making and achieving smaller goals with shorter timeframes for a decade now. They committed to and acheived carbon neutrality for their first party operations already and are now incrementally pushing that out to their supply chain and product lifecycle.

Based on past evidence this is not likely to be a set and forget arrangement for Apple.

without interlinks an airplane, ship, oil platform, or island could talk to the starlink sat, but the sat couldn't talk to its ground base station to forward their messages to the rest of the internet. Coverage for deep ocean will require a second generation that can talk sat -> sat.

FYI: The Dell P2415Q does have 4K60hz over HDMI as long as you get one manufactured recently. They did a silent spec bump in 2017 or 2018 or so. I use a number of these and while they are still slightly buggy, I've found them much better in that department than the UP2414Q.

The goal is awareness of the Y10K problem, and generally awareness of long term thinking and planning.

Depends on what you mean by practical. The software and hardware works (for now, until T2s become required). It allows you to build configurations that Apple does not (and probably will not) ever sell. They are not cost effective if you have a way to turn time into money though. I would not recommend it unless you have lax security & availability requirements and genuinely enjoy low level tinkering with the basic functions of your computer.

Macs have the option to run a 4K screen at different "effective dpis" via scaling. The default ~200% scaling factor gives you a 1920x1080 work area that is twice as sharp. A lot of folks (myself included) choose to draw larger work surfaces (I use a 5120x2880 canvas with 2560x1440 work area on my 24 inch 4Ks). A 4K screen is high enough DPI that when scaled text still looks very nice (nicer than a native res 1440p display). Doing this (especially on multiple displays) requires a lot of GPU power.

I use a 2018 Mac mini with an OWC Helios FX enclosure with a stock AMD Vega 56 GPU. My workload is some light gaming (Mac only no windows/boot camp) and 3x4K displays in scaled modes for web/software dev.

The mini itself is compact, fast, and generally great. Handles VM based dev workloads well. It’s small and quiet (not always silent though).

I used the machine with just the built in integrated GPU for a few months. For gaming it was bad. For lots of 4K screens it was... doable, in the sense that you could actually plug them all in, but UI effects would lag and it felt weirdly disjointed. Some tasks would be very fast then hit a GPU related thing (scrolling, OS animations, etc) and lag, stutter, making the system feel slower than it was.

Got the eGPU and it was 100% plug and play. Works beautifully, completely fixes all the UI issues, games generally run great (as good or better than my previous hackintosh with the same GPU in a direct PCI slot)

I’ve run into a few very small issues. USB-C connector tolerances are not always tight enough to reliably move equipment while it is all on, so sometimes if you grab the mini and drag it around (maybe to position it to plug in another cable) the GPU can disconnect. This generally falls back “gracefully” to the internal GPU but can be a bit annoying. You also have to think a bit more about heat management in your space. The GPU and mini all get hot when under load, you can’t stuff them in an unventilated hole. Overheat behavior is generally that the GPU shuts off and needs to be power cycled.

Compared to an iMac... The iMac is probably a better standalone deal and experience. However, in my case I have many machines and many displays. Mini+GPU lets me share generic displays across multiple machines in a way that an iMac simply can’t. Especially if you have existing windows gaming hardware where you can “recycle” the previous gen GPU in the Mac it can be way more cost effective. The GPU I am using is more powerful than you can get in any mac other than the Mac Pro.

Vs the Mac Pro... well the Mac Pro is better, but costs 4-a zillion times as much. kind of different ballparks. If you want a headless desktop and don’t need the Mac Pro crazy, a mini+GPU is a good option.

As a budget option? Mini+enclosure+GPU isn’t particularly cheap. My setup was ~2k without displays and I have a fairly simple spec setup (512GB, 16GB ram, slowest 6 core).

Where it shines is in modularity with other equipment. I can share the eGPU with laptops, share the GPUs with other windows machines, and share displays with other machines, in that environment it is cheaper and more flexible.

Uptime Robot is a simple SaaS that monitors TLS cert expiration dates (in addition to other things).

The parent likely means background killed in the sense that iOS fairly aggressively removes loaded web pages from memory and replaces them with a screenshot and a url. Most of your 500 tabs are likely screenshots and urls. When you select them they fetch the page from the server fresh.

In most cases this is fine and frees up memory for other apps/tabs, but with web apps with local state, said state gets clobbered in a way that never happens on a desktop browser. Because it is fully automatic you can never really tell or trust that local application state will still exist if you tab away and back.

Speaking of mini iphone... I have so many iPhone only apps that I wish I could run in the “mini iPhone split” next to whatever else I am doing rather than forcing them to take over the whole screen with an iPhone sized picture in the middle.

Yes yes yes. I’ve often wondered why they didn’t do this. Having to go through silly hoops like full exit back to the spring board to launch an app so that it is available in the dock to pick for split view... why not just use the springboard in the first place.

I love and use split screen all the time on my iPad for a variety of use cases. Even though I love the feature and find it really useful all of the UI constraints related to it are totally true. I would never want the feature removed, but the existing UI for it is beyond maddening.

Induction cooktops are fantastic. Wish it was possible to find them in rental housing instead of gas!

I've already experienced some of this.. World of Warcraft had an issue a month or so ago whereby their servers got hit by an IPv4 only DDoS attack that prevented people from playing. My ISP had native IPv6 and I was unaffected as a result.

Not a dumb question at all! The smallest IPv6 subnet is /64, so a /60 lets you split your network into multiple subnets without all the software that assumes a subnet is /64 (like address autoconfig) breaking. Why might you need multiple subnets? Lots of reasons, common ones are for security. It lets you do things like split up a home office network from home from guest wifi from IoT/home automation. Also allows new services to be created that use that capability.

autoconfig, DHCP, DNS, cut & paste, and pen/paper all work fine, depending on the reason you need to move the address.

I doubt there is much discussion because there isn't really a way around it. The world is full of situations (MAC addresses, VIN numbers, software serial numbers, content hashes, UUIDs, etc, etc, etc) where a global address space doesn't fit in Human short term memory.

Computers are pretty good at remembering numbers for us, that would be my first choice.

It was a focused product. Native apps, high performance, no funny business. Yes, it lacked some features that the newer stuff had, but it did the team chat part really well and got out of your way.

Deploying web apps lets you iterate faster, stuff features in faster without ending up with different capabilities across the group of apps. Sometimes the ability to add features too easily is abused to add too many features without thinking through them.

RIP HipChat, last top tier native work chat program. We were paying customers for HipChat and were forced off when Atlassian killed it. Replaced by stride/slack/discord/teams all built on electron and all with awful non-native UI and web app like performance.

I know why they do it: electron is cheap and easy to spam on every platform. I don't know why: people pay for this crap.

Perhaps the issue is that people don't pay for it? Teams is free, bundled with other MS stuff that people are buying anyways. Discord is free. Slack is mostly free (until you are already stuck with it).

An electric fan on a derby car works the same way a propeller does though right? You don’t need the sail at all. It works by pushing against the surrounding medium. This seems different than a laser in a vacuum.

Won’t disagree with the “wrong tool” characterization, but there are many situations where using the right tool (a dedicated windows pc or game console) comes with many other problematic side effects.

I do all of my gaming on a Mac with an eGPU and find it convenient and practical for my needs. It is much better (for my use case and constraints) than my previous solutions of hackintoshes, dedicated windows PCs.

It also makes websites that don't have high resolution icons, logos, etc really stand out and look bad.

You are correct that the size of the screen has nothing to do with data rate, except often larger displays have higher resolutions (which does affect data rate).

The main thing you gain is crisp and legible small point text for displaying large amounts of code, terminal outputs, etc without taking up large amounts of desk space. I have both standard DPI (~110) and higher dpi (180-220) displays all sitting next to each other at my desk right now. The high res ones look drastically better and are much easier on the eyes. It is quite noticeable.

This resolution is not particularly crazy either, it is the standard DPI of all of Apple's gear for the last 6 years or so and much lower resolution than most tablets & phones. One of the bottlenecks for moving this tech beyond Apple laptops and all-in-ones (of which I am not a huge fan) has been the lack of standard external connections with enough bandwidth for these displays.

So far the earlier versions of DisplayPort have worked quite well as a USB-C alt mode so I am hopeful.

I strongly disagree that higher resolutions are not interesting on smaller sized displays. I personally find 21.5 inch to be the sweet spot for 4K and welcome the better support for higher resolution so displays in the 24-30 inch range can more easily support 220+dpi, higher refresh rates, and HDR.

This seems to be the point of the article. That even down to the words we use to describe humankind, it is the male form that gets designated the “reference” form.

This has bigger implications in the design of safety equipment and tooling, sure, but the fact that no one dies because of the use of “mankind” vs “humankind” doesn’t mean we should dismiss it.

Just sign up for the Verizon plan from the cellular data menu on the device. No talking to anyone, no visiting Verizon store, no negotiating. Supports tethering. 2GB/2months, way more than enough for messaging and web browsing. Probably not enough for streaming video (I don’t do this, you can pay more for more data if you want). As the sibling comment mentioned other carriers have similar or better deals for tablets.

The “catch” is that there are no voice minutes and you have to carry a tablet instead of a phone. This is apparently enough of a burden that people don’t take them up on it. If you can live with those constraints (it is definitely doable) then it is a fantastic price.

I've been using a 9.7 inch cellular iPad as my primary mobile device for 6 years or so. It works very well for my use case but I do understand why more people don't do it.

In my arrangement, the tablet replaces a phone, ebook, paper notes, and a laptop. I primarily use the machine for messaging/email, maps, reading (books, websites), writing notes, and using terminals. I use desktop computers with many displays (and clouds/racks of servers) for anything "real work" like. A laptop doesn't cut it.

The bigger screen is significantly better than a phone (even a big one) for most of those things. Especially multi-tasking use cases where I want slack+a terminal visible at once. The bigger keyboard is far more comfortable for taking notes and using terminals.

I make/receive very few phone calls, and the ones I do use a headset and a Voip app. If you use the phone a lot for holding up to your head and talking to people a tablet works poorly. Most of my camera use is for things like scanning documents, qr codes, etc where the size/awkwardness is less an issue. I have a single purpose camera that I take on photo heavy trips like vacations. These are both trade offs that make sense to me but I don't think make sense for a lot of people.

I have a case with a hand strap that makes it safe and easy to use the tablet while standing/walking around, something that is hard to do with a laptop. I don't own or use a car so I tend to carry a messenger bag with me everywhere for general storage so adding the tablet to that is straight forward. It is easy to take the tablet in and out of the bag while standing if I need to look something up. Because I primarily use public transit I am free to actually use the screen of my device while in transit. Again, the more common use case where your car stores your stuff and you can't use your screen while in transit likely pushes the common case towards phone sized devices.

I pay $17.50 per month for Verizon cellular data with no contracts and no funny business. LTE data plans for tablets are priced assuming you have a smartphone already. Especially with today's $1000+ phones, a tablet + LTE plan can be drastically cheaper than a smartphone.

Finally, I like the friction of usage balance. It is much easier to grab the tablet (especially while standing/walking) than to deal with a laptop. It is a bit harder than pulling a phone out of your pocket. This leads me to avoid wasting time on my mobile device when with other people, in meetings, standing in line, etc, but makes it much easier to deploy computing power when it is necessary (standing in the data center and need to run one terminal command quickly).

The one thing I would change would be to add a watch that would help with turn by turn walking directions, basic message checking, and NFC payments. I look forward to the day that Apple Watch will pair with a tablet (or work with no tethered device).

I’ve been using dell P2415Qs. I run 3 at the HiDPI “looks like 2560x1440”. It’s not perfect 2x scaling, but it is close enough (185 dpi) and the price $300-400 each cant be beat. I’ve considered switching to the 21.5 inch LG ultrafines (220 dpi) but they are $700 and have very limited port choices compared to the dells. I use the dell displays with multiple other machines that don’t have USB-C graphics out. And want to be able to use the displays with eGPUs that won’t have USB-C out.

I just hope the default GPU of the mini can drive 3 UHD displays without choking on the dock animations :|

Not sure about NYC, but there are absolutely people in Chicago and Milwaukee who will call a rideshare (or insist that they pick up/be picked up by family) even though there is a city bus that goes literally directly door to door and the vehicle is sitting there ready to leave in a few minutes. It is depressing.

Anecdotally it is much worse in cases where the bus in question passes through areas where non-affluent white people will be getting on and off.

The parent is not saying that replicating human judgement is unnecessary complexity, quite the opposite, that our expectations for software replicating human judgement are making it complicated and as a result of that complexity we have "better" software.

Concrete example: Photo organizing program

Old style simple, non-complicated: Photos exist as files on a single computer that are manually placed into albums by people, manually shared in curated batches by printing or emailing.

New style complicated, replicates human judgement: Photos exist in the cloud shared across devices. AI software takes date, location, face & object detection to create automated albums, reject the photos that people aren't looking, etc.