Because there's more to "actual user experience" than peak CPU/GPU/NPU workload.
Firstly, the M5 isn't 4-6x more powerful than M4 - the claim is only for GPU, only for one narrow workload, not overall performance uplift. Overall performance uplift looks like ~20% over M4, and probably +100% over M1 or so.
But there is absolutely a massive sea change in the MacBook since Intel 5 years ago: your peak workloads haven't changed much, but the hardware improvements give you radically different UX.
For one thing, the Intel laptops absolutely burned through the battery. Five years ago the notion of the all-day laptop was a fantasy. Even relatively light users were tethered to chargers most of the day. This is now almost fully a thing of the past. Unless your workloads are very heavy, it is now safe to charge the laptop once a day. I can go many hours in my workday without charging. I can go through a long flight without any battery anxiety. This is a massive change in how people use laptops.
Secondly is heat and comfort. The Intel Macs spun their fans up at even mild workloads, creating noise and heat - they were often very uncomfortably warm. Similar workloads are now completely silent with the device barely getting warmer than ambient temp.
Thirdly is allowing more advanced uses on lower-spec and less expensive machines. For example, the notion of rendering and editing video on a Intel MacBook Air was a total pipe dream. Now a base spec MacBook Air can do... a lot that once forced you into a much higher price point/size/weight.
A lot of these HN conversations feel like sports car fans complaining: "all this R&D and why doesn't my car go 500mph yet?" - there are other dimensions being optimized for!
> In this context this would mean having the ability and documentation to build or install alternative operating systems on this hardware
It doesn't work. Everything from banks to Netflix and others are slowly edging out anything where they can't fully verify the chain of control to an entity they can have a legal or contractual relationship with. To be clear, this is fundamental, not incidental. You can't run your own operating system because it's not in Netflix's financial interest for you to do so. Or your banks, or your government. They all benefit from you not having control, so you can't.
This is why it's so important to defend the real principles here not just the technical artefacts of them. Netflix shouldn't be able to insist on a particular type of DRM for me to receive their service. Governments shouldn't be able to prevent me from end to end encrypting things. I should be able to opt into all this if I want more security, but it can't be mandatory. However all of these things are not technical, they are principles and rights that we have to argue for.
I've opted to do this myself by buying a VPS for ~$5/month with Digital Ocean. It runs a Wireguard server and nginx, and then my home lab router connects via Wireguard. Nginx acts as a reverse proxy to serve content from my home lab. I have (relatively speaking) complete control over the entire path.
When running Cloudflare tunnels, opening a port on your router, or having a VPS+Wireguard, it's important to think about security and covering your butt. I run everything in a DMZ subnet that has firewall/ACL rules on both the DMZ and my other networks to restrict any access. I put bandwidth caps on individual VMs/containers. I also use Wireguard to reroute all outbound Internet requests from the DMZ so that my home lab doesn't use my home IP address at all.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but the last thing I need is to forget about some web project I was experimenting with in my lab and suddenly the Internet connection I pay for is being used by some bad actor to participate in ddos or to resell access to my trusted residential IP for scamming purposes.
Home Assistant "just works". Yes it has a ton of knobs, but in the 3 years I've been running it, it's had no issues. Certain manufacturer devices being flaky, yes, but as a platform, it's been rock solid. I've not touched its config in over a year and everything works as it should.
I’ve been toying with a concept inspired by Apple’s Find My network:
Imagine a decentralized, delay-tolerant messaging system where messages hop device-to-device (e.g., via Bluetooth, UWB, Wi-Fi Direct), similar to how “Find My” relays location via nearby iPhones.
Now add a twist:
• Senders pay a small fee to send a message.
• Relaying devices earn a micro-payment (could be tokens, sats, etc.) for carrying the message one hop further.
• End-to-end encrypted, fully decentralized, optionally anonymous.
Basically, a “postal network” built on people’s phones, without needing a traditional internet connection. Works best in areas with patchy or no internet, or under censorship.
Obvious challenges:
• Latency and reliability (it’s not real-time).
• Abuse/spam prevention.
• Power consumption and user opt-in.
• Viable incentive structures.
What do you think?
Is this viable? Any real-world use cases where this might be actually useful — or is it just a neat academic toy?
I've been guilty of this myself for our neurotech sleeptech company, and I still owe HN a better blog post clarifying our positioning.
I think there are a few reasons you see this in health/medical community.
1) just helping people understand a different view of the problem is often enough for one blog post. Stuffing new way to look at solution and new solution together can sometimes be a bit much.
2) we have to be cautious from a regulatory perspective about what we say, and sometimes in being too cautious don't give the people who REALLY want to understaned the processes enough to go on. For our company, I used to say things like "we can increase the synchronous firing of neurons which results in reduced 15^% drop in early night cortisol, and 14.5% increase in hrv....".
But prior to regulatory approvals, we can't point directly to neurological or physiological processes, which means we kinda end up talking around the solution a bit.
3) in marketing, they want to connect and build an audience, so they are dripping more information over time. One post gets feedback and interest from one group, then you do another, and another. It's about building the community and connecting with people, not just a "here's a problem, do the thing, thanks". If you are trying to build a business, you probably need to get in front of people 7-8 times, particularly if you're taking a new approach to a problem, to build trust and brand recognition.
It's not the best, but it is the way the world works.
> "Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet"
At the end of one of her interviews on youtbue, Kelly McGonigal explains that -- paraphrased -- being praised to the face creates an intimate context around the praiser and the praisee, in which it's the praiser that sets the tone and initiates the dynamics. In a way, they find themselves in a position where they evaluate you. This is why taking praise gracefully is not trivial; people being praised usually show bodily signs of stress. It takes a real effort for the praisee not to dismiss or belittle their own achievement, just to get out of those dynamics as soon as possible.
At the end of said interview, the host praised Ms. McGonigal to her face. In response, she drew his attention to the fact that while he was talking, speaking those words of appreciation, she swallowed. The act of her swallowing was a kind of stress-relief (IIRC). (I'm sure we can all relate to choking up slightly when praised to the face.) She highlighted the dynamics of being praised to the face live, mid-interview, through her own reaction.
You may be avoiding sharing your wins with others because you instinctively might want to avoid the situation where others qualify you. In that situation, you experience being the subject of an evaluation, and that -- i.e., being talked about -- might feel like a subordinate position to be in, even if the judging is 100% positive. My remedy is to just yield, lean back, give in, permit the other person to be in control, allow them to have all power in that context, and just bask in the glorious warmth they're sending your way. It can be an experience that you remember for decades after, and you're going to start to crave it. (Peer recognition can be a huge motivator, i.e., doing things for recognition. Whether that's good or bad, is a separate topic :))
For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me. That’s okay — I don’t feel bitter about that or anything. And I don’t wanna overstate what a good friend I am or whatever, I just do this a decent amount. But some part of me does wish I had someone celebrating my wins.
This:
“No one comes to mind? Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet.”
really, really hit me for some reason. I’m pretty averse to praise/congratulations — even if I feel it’s deserved! — so I don’t really share my wins with people. How can I expect to have people hype me up if I don’t let them in a little? It’s obvious when I write it all out but I kinda can’t believe how long I’ve been operating this way.
> To accomplish that feat, the treatment is wrapped in fatty lipid molecules to protect it from degradation in the blood on its way to the liver, where the edit will be made. Inside the lipids are instructions that command the cells to produce an enzyme that edits the gene. They also carry a molecular GPS — CRISPR — which was altered to crawl along a person’s DNA until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be changed.
That is one of the most incredible things I have ever read.
Having used Solid on a largish web product for over a year, I am thoroughly convinced and will not be returning to React in the future.
This is somewhat of an aside: I am aware that the creator of Solid has long been experimenting with adding laziness to the reactive system. I think it would be a mistake. That everything is immediate keeps state changes intuitive, fairly easy to debug, and is one of the strong points of Solid's design. I've never run into a real world scenario where delaying computations seemed like an optimal way of solving a given problem.
> No, this begging is particularly different because it capitalizes on the good will of open source developers.
> Microsoft, Apple, and Google are standing on the internet in their trillion dollar business suits with a sign that reads "Starving and homeless. Any free labor will help."
> They aren't holding people up at gun point. Rather they hold out their Rolex encrusted hand and beg, plead, and shame open source developers until they get free labor.
> Once they get this free labor they rarely give credit.
> They're ungrateful beggars that take their donated work hours, jump in their Teslas, and ride off to make more trillions proclaiming, "Haha! That open source idiot just gave me 10 hours of free labor. What a loser."
> As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers.
Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they can re-implement it themselves while also breaking the licenses that the authors use. Not sure how people fell so hard for "Microsoft <3 Open Source" but it's never been true, and seems it still isn't, just like "Security is the #1 priority" also never been true for them.
Here is the previous time I can remember that they did something similar:
The best advice for open source maintainers who are being approached by large tech companies is to be very wary, and let them contribute/engage like everyone else if they're interested, instead of setting up private meetings and eventually get "forked-but-not-really" without attribution.
A long, long time ago (within the past ten years), I had to verify my age with a site. They didn't ask for my ID, or my facial scan, but instead asked for my credit card number. They issued a refund to the card of a few cents, and I had to tell them (within 24hr) how much the refund was for, after which point they'd issue a charge to claw it back. They made it clear that debit and gift cards would not be accepted, it must be a credit card. So I grabbed my Visa card, punched in the numbers, checked my banking app to see the +$0.24 refund, entered the value, got validated, and had another -$0.24 charge to claw it back.
Voila, I was verified as an adult, because I could prove I had a credit card.
The whole point of mandating facial recognition or ID checks isn't to make sure you're an adult, but to keep records of who is consuming those services and tie their identities back to specific profiles. Providers can swear up and down they don't retain that information, but they often use third-parties who may or may not abide by those same requests, especially if the Gov comes knocking with a secret warrant or subpoena.
Biometric validation is surveillance, plain and simple.
Layoffs are a difficult thing for employees and their managers. I have seen people (one was a VP of Engineering) escorted out of the building, sent in a cab to home along with a security guard (this was in India), not allowed access to computer or talk with other employees.
But, recently have had a very different experience. The current company I work for announced 30% layoffs. The list was made public within one hour of announcement. The CEO detailed the process of selecting people. The severance was very generous (3-6 months pay) along with health and other benefits. The impacted employees were allowed to keep the laptop and any other assets they took from the company. They even paid the same severance to contractors.
After the announcement, the laid off employees were given a few days in the company to allow them to say good byes. I love the CEOs comment on this ' I trusted them yesterday, I trust them today'. This was by far the kindest way of laying off employees imo. People were treated with dignity and respect.
Can AR glasses be used as just a monitor? I am under the impression that they are sort of smart devices. How do they get a video signal from the computer?
So, the Xreal glasses are (generally) a dumb USB-C DisplayPort alt-mode device. Plug glasses in, get video to the little displays in your eyes. With a companion app (not needed) you can have your computer do some heavy lifting and make virtual displays out of it.
The new "One" unit referenced in this review is the same but does have some smarts to do on-glasses processing of the virtual displays itself instead, if I understand it.
Xreal also sells you some companion devices that are just little Android bricks to cast media to and from and play things from as well.
This is Senator Chris Murphy explaining it’s not economic policy, it’s an attempt to blackmail corporations into submission by making a deal with him in return for sanctions relief.
Keep an eye out for what Apple and nvidia might have agreed to give.
because nuclear fission are big central energy sources, where the consumers are at the direct mercy of the owners.
Decentralized clean solar power, which can be generated on a regional and even private level, makes people independent. Which is a huge treat if you want them dependent.
Not the OP but I tell everyone on the market that one of the highest ROI things you can do is just go through your own past career history with a fine toothed comb and simply remember all the different things you did and be able to tell the story of each concisely and informatively (if possible, recall actual numbers and quantifiable impacts etc.).
When in an interview, when you're asked a question about your past experiences, the larger the library you have to draw on, the more likely you are to find an example that's relevant and persuasive. Even questions of the form "How would you deal with [hypothetical scenario]", I encourage applicants, if possible, to answer it in the form of "Oh yeah, that's interesting, we had to deal with a very similar case at [one of my previous jobs], here was my approach towards it".
After each interview, do a "l'esprit de l'escalier" retro, write down all the questions asked, what your answer was at the time and what you would have ideally answered now given the fullness of time to think about it. If there's a significant delta, that's a sign to go back and prepare more until your "real time" performance approaches your retroactive performance.
(Denim head) Anecdata - buying Levis from Amazon (or any other store), pick up at least a couple of pairs in the same size. It's likely different people/factories making them, but often you'll find variation in size/denim even when the labelling in the same. One pair of 32/32 might feel 'off' and the next is the best pair you've ever owned. Completely agree with going 'smaller' brand if you want consistency though (and that's a whole different world).
But better tip - (if you're not looking for 'smart' denim) buy from eBay. Only buy pairs where everything has been measured properly (waist, inside leg, rise, etc) so you can get close to what you know you fits. You can find 20+ year old Levis for less than $20 - the denim is heavier, the quality is good and they have that perfect 'broken in' feel that makes the jeans feel like your best friend. Plus you can afford to try a few pairs to find ones you love.
Here's an easy, if not always precise way to remember:
* Hyphens connect things, such as compound words: double-decker, cut-and-dried, 212-555-5555.
* EN dashes make a range between things: Boston–San Francisco flight, 10–20 years: both connect not only the endpoints, but define that all the space between is included. (Compare the last usage with the phone number example under Hyphens.)
* EM dashes break things, such as sentences or thoughts: 'What the—!'; A paragraph should express one idea—but rules are made to be broken.
Unicode has the original ASCII hyphen-minus (U+002d), as well as a dedicated hyphen (U+2010), other functional hyphens such as soft and non-breaking hyphens, and a dedicated minus sign (U+2212), and some variations of minus such as subscript, superscript, etc.
There's also the figure dash "‒" (U+2012), essentally a hyphen-minus that's the same width as numbers and used aesthetically for typsetting, afaik. And don't overlook two-em-dashes "⸺" and three-em-dashes "⸻" and horizontal bars "―", the latter used like quotation marks!
Already see people saying GitLab is better: yes it is, but it also sucks in different ways.
After years of dealing with this (first Jenkins, then GitLab, then GitHub), my takeaway is:
* Write as much CI logic as possible in your own code. Does not really matter what you use (shell scripts, make, just, doit, mage, whatever) as long as it is proper, maintainable code.
* Invest time that your pipelines can run locally on a developer machine as well (as much as possible at least), otherwise testing/debugging pipelines becomes a nightmare.
* Avoid YAML as much as possible, period.
* Don't bind yourself to some fancy new VC-financed thing that will solve CI once and for all but needs to get monetized eventually (see: earthly, dagger, etc.)
* Always use your own runners, on-premise if possible
I would strongly recommend you _don't_ get a Framework.
I bought one. It lasted less than a year. One day I pulled it out to use it and it just stopped booting. It had been barely used up to that point. No drops or anything like that.
Support was giving me the runaround, too -- by not using info I provided them, not answering direct questions, and asking me to provide info I had already provided.
Do some research on Framework support. You'll find it is atrocious.
The idea is absolutely amazing and I hope it succeeds. The expansion cards are an AMAZING feature. The problem is that the quality bar just isn't being met, yet.
A former mentor gave me some valuable advice once about this that didn't make sense til years later. Basically, I got a computer science degree while working full time minimum wage - in a very competitive program and high cost of living area. It was extraordinarily hard, orders of magnitude harder than anything else I've ever done, just trying to survive and not starve and somehow find the time to do well in my studies.
He said something like "if you keep burning the candle at 110% like you have been for long, you'll find that you often can find something deep within you to keep going, but eventually, this can run dry, and it doesn't really regenerate. It takes something from you that you aren't going to get back."
I don't mean minor stuff like, "oh I'm really tired today and I don't want to go to school." I'm talking like, very difficult coursework + stressful job + major life calamities and personal loss all compiling at the same time in a way that you just want to crawl into a pit and die, yet, you keep going - that kind of willpower/stamina whatever you want to call it.
He was right. I think he was alluding somewhat to burnout, which I think is related but somehow different - I am not the same person I was before that endeavor, and don't feel I really ever "healed" from it. It's very difficult to describe. feels a little like anhedonia, like a part of me has been missing since then. When I get in similar circumstances now, I find it harder to summon whatever it was inside of me that "kept going."
I expect I'm still healing because I'm only ~10 years removed from this, but, sometimes I'm not sure.
This is probably over-engineered, even for people who can juggle their kubernetes inventory in their head.
For things like the bottom of my desk, I use a cable stapler to attach gear ties. You can easily add or remove a cable without tools.
I know, gear ties are kind of expensive. You can get cheap plant wire+foam thingies if you want.
Zip-ties are good for permanent or needs-to-be-secure situations, but I rarely guess right on "permanent". Then I need to dig out a cable nipper and another properly sized zip tie to make changes.
If I can give one piece of advice on cable management it's this:
Get a "Cable Management Box", actually get several.
Everywhere you have a power strip you should have one of these. It helps contain the mess of cords, hides it away, and prevents them from being dust/spider/hair traps you don't want to touch. Shove the extra cable inside the box so you don't have a extra wires laying about. You will absolutely love not seeing a rats nest of cables, even if it's just behind/under something.
I won't link to any product because they are all the same. It's just a plastic box with 2 holes/slots on the sides and a lid. It's stupid-simple but it's worth every penny. If the box is visible I guess you could spring for the more expensive ones but I usually get a 2-3 pack for $20-30. I don't think I've ever bought the same brand twice since are all the same and I just pick the cheapest that fit my needs (size).
Search for "Cable Management Box" and you'll find it.
You'll probably also be interesting in "6-Inch Power Extension Cable", they are great for wall warts. You can plug multiple of these into a power strip and then hang the large heads off to the side (instead of blocking multiple ports). And all of that stays tucked away in your cable management box.
Only 10% disk space left. Peak memory usage at 90% available RAM. $CRITICAL_PACKAGE version update has been available for 2 months.
Once you see the pattern, it can be used all over the place: Pre-programmed proactive reminders for all sorts of upkeep chores that you don't want to spend mental bandwidth on.
Firstly, the M5 isn't 4-6x more powerful than M4 - the claim is only for GPU, only for one narrow workload, not overall performance uplift. Overall performance uplift looks like ~20% over M4, and probably +100% over M1 or so.
But there is absolutely a massive sea change in the MacBook since Intel 5 years ago: your peak workloads haven't changed much, but the hardware improvements give you radically different UX.
For one thing, the Intel laptops absolutely burned through the battery. Five years ago the notion of the all-day laptop was a fantasy. Even relatively light users were tethered to chargers most of the day. This is now almost fully a thing of the past. Unless your workloads are very heavy, it is now safe to charge the laptop once a day. I can go many hours in my workday without charging. I can go through a long flight without any battery anxiety. This is a massive change in how people use laptops.
Secondly is heat and comfort. The Intel Macs spun their fans up at even mild workloads, creating noise and heat - they were often very uncomfortably warm. Similar workloads are now completely silent with the device barely getting warmer than ambient temp.
Thirdly is allowing more advanced uses on lower-spec and less expensive machines. For example, the notion of rendering and editing video on a Intel MacBook Air was a total pipe dream. Now a base spec MacBook Air can do... a lot that once forced you into a much higher price point/size/weight.
A lot of these HN conversations feel like sports car fans complaining: "all this R&D and why doesn't my car go 500mph yet?" - there are other dimensions being optimized for!