It depends on if the universe is fundamentally deterministic or not. Right now we don't have any way to see beyond the apparent randomness in quantum mechanics and we probably never will. This part of the universe might be completely non-computable to us, it's just random.

Randomness doesn't have any real impact on whether a problem is computable. Just model the distribution of the random variable. Non-deterministic Turing machines are a thing.

That's true. I suppose it comes down to what exactly is meant by "is computable". I don't think it was defined well enough, which I suppose is to be expected when discussing these topics that involve lots of hand-waving.

I interpreted it to mean that we can predict the outcome of it, you interpret it to mean that we can model it.

Either way, maybe it doesn't matter since the original proposal is that consciousness is a subjective experience and there isn't an obvious way to define how to programmatically create it i.e. compute it.

You probably mean probabilistic Turing machines. Non-deterministic automata in general don't involve randomness, and the results of their computation are considered to be deterministic despite the name.

And of course all TMs are just theoretical models. Non-deterministic Turing machine equivalents in particular don't physically exist and may be physically impossible.

But of course if there is indeed true randomness in nature that needs to be modelled, that same randomness can be used a source of true randomness for computation, and you can then build computation that does have stochastically determined results.

Would you say that philosophical zombie is computable? AFAIK dualists agree that philosophical zombie is impossible in this universe, which means what is computable is a conscious being.

They removed Secure Delete because it doesn't work with SSDs due to the way they work at the hardware level (wear leveling).

No, it doesn’t work reliably, which is why they removed it. It’s better not to have a tool than having a security tool that might work.

Also IIRC secure delete is useless on APFS volumes as they are always fully encrypted, even when FileVault is not enabled.

> It’s better not to have a tool than having a security tool that might work.

This is what I don't get about SMS apps that may or may not send encrypted messages. (Like Apple's own)

In that case the button changes color before sending, making it clear whether the message will be encrypted or not. (I have disabled the SMS fallback, which is indeed problematic.)

TRIM isn't really a command so much as it is a performance hint.

Even at the drive level, deallocating the space used by a file is not the same as erasing it, and actually erasing every flash block that may still contain data from the file would be very expensive for SSDs to implement (both in terms of performance overhead, and in terms of burning out the flash sooner).

Also a Mac user for nearly 2 decades. I don't care too much about most of the things mentioned in the article but I absolutely agree with you about the new System Prefs.

Another thing terrible about the Settings app is you cannot navigate it with the keyboard only (at least I have not figured out how). So if your Bluetooth mouse fails (which happens at least once a week for me) you can’t use a keyboard alone to correct it. Nope you have to fish out a wired mouse, plug it in, and then reset Bluetooth or whatever it takes to get the BT mouse working again. Madness.

Isn't the only way to navigate it now by using the search bar to find the thing you're looking for?

I jest, but there was a time when I could find my settings in under a minute or two.

Settings -> Keyboard -> Turn on "Keyboard Navigation"

Why on earth would that be off by default though?

For simple users, perhaps because it might be confusing (press some keys accidentally, something suddenly happens in the UI).

For some power users, perhaps because if you don't need it, it hijacks a lot of key combinations that you could use as custom keyboard shortcuts.

Best guess is Apple finds it slightly unaesthetic and considers it more of an assistive function rather than strictly necessary for everyone.

I think its been this was as long as OS X has existed, maybe even earlier versions of Mac OS were the same?

I feel exactly the same as you do. I switched to MacBooks in 2007 primarily because of how much better the trackpad was than the Windows and Linux laptops I had. Still using a MacBook, haven't looked back.

How so? I have iPhone and have a group text with 3 family members on android and it seems to work fine.

The above commenter explained how. iPhones will sometimes simply refuse to send an actual text message if the phone number was once associated with an iMessage account. I have deregistered my phone number from iMessage, iCloud, and whatever else, and my parents' iPhones still send me iMessages despite texting my phone number, even replying to a message or geoup that I text messaged from my phone number. Apple has already been sued about this before. That and picture and video sending is horrible, I think because Apple has historically not implemented protocols that Android exposes.