Is this a Black Mirror episode or something?

We just had a vote for government officials along the EP vote. Less than 60% turned up which means the most common vote was a vote for nothing. The average voter doesn’t care.

Eh, kinda. The macbooks still come with 8gb non replaceable memory and the upcharge for another 8gb is $200 (not just for the air but the $1600 pro too). These are still great laptops but the pricing feels hostile.

IPad hardware is brilliant but what’s the point? You’re stuck with a neutered OS and a handheld formfactor that is not especially suitable for work or for gaming (the fields that usually need more power).

The baseline iphones are still lacking basic features like a high refresh screen purely for product segmentation purposes. And once again a slew of hostile, anti-user and anti-developer decisions like banning sideloading or alternative browser engines mainly designed to lock down the OS so they can retain all control of what goes on on your device. Another way this control is used is to funnel you to use icloud which offers an introductory free tier of 5(?) GB of data. I don’t think I had a single relative that didn’t have the “your icloud storage is full” popup every day until we disabled photo backups or they started paying a monthly subscription.

The app store is also a disaster. Just open it and search for something, I’m not even going to say more. This is an obvious profit vs user experience tradeoff.

Airpods are more or less fine. I had a gen1 Airpods pro which were kinda category defining at the time. Competition has caught up however, also better repairability would be nice. I’m actually surprised you were allowed to use them without an iPhone.

Apple watch seems fine, still no 3rd party watchfaces. The locked down OS is somewhat more justified in this case.

I haven’t tried the vision pro but that is also locked down software wise.

Overall, as you said, the hardware is good to best-in-class but it feels to me that at every turn you are being pushed and manipulated into giving more of your cash to Apple sometimes in the form of product segmentation, sometimes via artificial software limitations.

You don’t get to be a trillion dollar company just by making good products.

I don’t think it’s going anywhere either but Warren Buffet did sell his position in Apple. The M1 for sure is/was a hit but other than that they seem more focused on extracting every penny from customers, rather than providing the best products possible. I guess we’ll see how it works out as a long term strategy.

The new stunning, groundbreaking, and bespoke iPad Pro. They are nice enough but it is safe to say I was not stunned.

Now that’s a reference

I lost faith in the verge after how they handled the whole PC build fiasco

Would you even be able to move it? You’d have to put it in neutral first so you can attempt to push it but good luck with that if it’s bricked. I know electric cars generally shouldn’t really be towed either (a few meters might be okay but I’m not sure).

I’m still looking for something to replace my shield TV tube. I don’t believe that has AV1 support.

Homing Pigeons 🪽?

Who knows, maybe now Chat GPT will blabber about for an extra three paragraphs before getting to the point and then give you bullshit info like many of the YouTubers.

Chat GPT, how do I change a light bulb?

Hey, what’s up, fam? Welcome back to my channel! Today, I’m going to show you how to change a light bulb, but first, let me tell you about this crazy party I went to last weekend. It was insane! I mean, the DJ was dropping beats like nobody’s business, and the dance floor was on fire!

But back to business. You know, changing a light bulb might seem like a simple task, but trust me, it’s all about the technique. Before we dive into that, though, let me share with you my latest fashion haul. I just scored these killer new sneakers that are going to take my style game to the next level!

Changing a light bulb is like changing your mindset, you know? It’s all about embracing the light and letting go of the darkness. Deep stuff, I know. But hey, that’s just how I roll.

Okay, back to the light bulb situation. So, you’re gonna need a ladder for this. Or maybe a chair if you’re feeling adventurous. I mean, who needs a ladder, am I right? Safety first, who needs it?

Next, you gotta unscrew the old bulb. But be careful, 'cause sometimes those suckers can be stubborn. If it doesn’t come out easily, just give it a good yank. What’s the worst that could happen, right?

Now, grab your new bulb and… umm… just stick it in there, I guess? I mean, it’s not rocket science. Oh, and make sure the power’s still on while you’re doing this. Adds a little excitement to the process, you know?

And that’s it! You’ve successfully changed a light bulb. Or at least, I hope you have. If not, well, there’s always candles, right? Anyway, thanks for watching, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share this video with your friends. Catch you on the flip side!

So this wasn’t exactly retaliation. The first approval epic got this year was from an automated system. Once they got the approval they assumed (very understandably) that apple was okay with them establishing their store within the new guidelines, so they announced their plans publicly. They also continued to diss apple on Twitter of course. Hearing the announcement, Apple execs decided to ban them again because they didn’t adhere to the rules last time.

This however completely looked like retaliation from apple’s side, so the DMA lawyers started an investigation and Apple had to re-allow epic again.

Wether it’s apple’s fault for having the shitty automated system or not, doesn’t really matter though. I just hope we get proper sideloading by the end of the process.

I could kinda see them designing a chip maybe but that’s not what they are saying. Many companies have their own chip by going to AMD for example and using their designs and process nodes to create something more use-case specific. For example the steam deck’s soc is a custom design madefor Valve. Or as you said it is possible to licence and customise designs from Arm to create your own custom SOC. This is what smartphone manufacturers do. Then they take their designs to a foundry like TSMC to create actual chips out of them.

But I don’t think that’s what openai is aiming for here, they want their own foundry. They themselves want to design and produce the chips.

Not even considering the actual design of the chips, just being able to mass produce something on the scale of modern transistors with economical yields is an insane task.

On some of the newest nodes, one aspect of lythography (the process of marking out transistors with a directed light) involves creating a micro-drop of certain molten metals. While the drop is falling, it is hit by a low power laser to change its shape to a ‘pancake’ like form. After this it is hit by a more powerful laser that vaporises the drop, crating a very specific wavelength of light. This light is then focused into an extremely sharp laser that marks out the transistor patterns on the target silicon. The process happens thousands of times a second.

Of course you can’t just buy one of these machines on Amazon. Each company guards their newest process nodes with the utmost secrecy, as developing a new node can cost billions of dollars, not even mentioning what it costs to build, outfit, and run an actual foundry itself.

This is one machine that is part of the complex process that is making microchips. Nvidia doesn’t even have their own foundry, they have been relying on Samsung and TSMC recently.

Asking for trillions of dollars to build something from scratch is just so unbelievably silly. Almost as silly as someone actually giving it to them.

That’s fine, I agree it makes the roads safer, but it won’t make me buy a car that screams at me

Also some of these cars are from 2021. I imagine there can be a significant difference between these and newer models.

I wonder how Audi is doing. They had a level 3 car coming out a few years ago now. Haven’t heard of it since…

Linking to the actual test so you don’t have to visit the verge.

What is interesting to me that many failed on the driver monitoring side which to me as a consumer (not a traffic authority) is probably actually a pro not a con. I don’t want my car insessantly beeping at me for dumb reasons. I wouldn’t intend to use these systems without attention but stricter controls will also mean more false positives.

By this logic Lexus, Volvo, Nissan, Mercedes, and even Ford seem great (somewhat depending on the model of the car).

Whats also funny is that the Tesla utterly failed almost all categories except the lane change (and passed emergency). But it can’t even do that unless you’re willing to pay them extra thousands of dollars for the software unlock.

Almost feels like it’s more about kerning than actual character changes. Though I do prefer the symbols of calibri.

How can the picture be real if your eyes aren’t real?

Or 3

I’ve tried yatee several times now on various ios devices but there always seem to be issues. Do you know an invidious instance where 4k works reliably?