HN user

redacted

923 karma

Physicist, tinkerer, procrastinator

Posts27
Comments161
View on HN
www.wyden.senate.gov 6y ago

Bipartisan Letter from Congress to Tim Cook on Hong Kong [pdf]

redacted
3pts0
www.rte.ie 7y ago

Irish Data Protection Commissioner Opens Third Privacy Investigation into Apple

redacted
4pts0
www.meganhuxhold.com 10y ago

Lessons Learned from Working Remotely

redacted
2pts0
www.slate.com 11y ago

Unhealthy Fixation: the war on GMOs is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud

redacted
2pts0
www.youtube.com 12y ago

Interchanging camera and lighting: Dual Photography [SIGGRAPH, video]

redacted
3pts0
dashes.com 12y ago

A brief history of Apple's iWatch - Anil Dash

redacted
1pts1
www.neocomputer.org 13y ago

Hacking E.T. for the Atari 2600 using a hex editor

redacted
15pts1
arstechnica.com 13y ago

With downgraded credit, Nokia sells and leases back HQ to raise cash

redacted
4pts1
ignco.de 13y ago

Casual users need as good a computer as possible, proficient users can make do

redacted
90pts61
www.theverge.com 13y ago

Windows 8 - Hands on with your next OS | The Verge

redacted
6pts0
daringfireball.net 15y ago

IOS doesn’t have Flash because Steve Jobs is a dick.

redacted
8pts0
arstechnica.com 15y ago

Android chief Rubin's response to Android critics misses the point

redacted
36pts29
appleheadlines.com 15y ago

Skype opens competition for community redesign of Mac client

redacted
9pts2
arstechnica.com 15y ago

One month later, Honeycomb has just 50 native apps

redacted
14pts26
jkkramer.wordpress.com 15y ago

Peter Norvig's Sudoku solver: Clojure & Python side by side

redacted
143pts67
www.businessinsider.com 15y ago

Steve Jobs Wasn't Lying: iPad Market Share Was Really More Than 90% Last Year

redacted
2pts0
www.irvinebrown.com 15y ago

Music designed for Shuffle

redacted
2pts0
www.theserverside.com 15y ago

Huge war over whether Java is pass by reference or pass by value.

redacted
21pts31
www.foreignpolicy.com 15y ago

The Tyranny of Metaphor

redacted
1pts0
i.imgur.com 15y ago

Vim: movement commands desktop

redacted
4pts0
springerlink.com 15y ago

Physicists show backscatter scanners won't see what they were designed to detect

redacted
2pts0
arstechnica.com 15y ago

Chrome Web Store: a solution in search of a problem?

redacted
3pts3
inventwithpython.com 15y ago

I am Boycotting Amazon for the Holidays

redacted
7pts0
bugs.python.org 15y ago

Issue 10562: Change 'j' for imaginary unit into an 'i'

redacted
48pts54
nakkaya.com 15y ago

A simple Forth interpreter in Clojure

redacted
3pts0
arstechnica.com 15y ago

The 21st century guide to platform trolling: Windows edition

redacted
1pts0
github.com 15y ago

Functional Koans (in Erlang, Clojure, F#, Scala)

redacted
2pts1
Ollama's new app 12 months ago

No one should use ollama. A cursory search of r/localllama gives plenty of occassions where they've proven themselves bad actors. Here's a 'fun' overview

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1kg20mu/so_why_...

There are multiple (far better) options - eg LM studio if you want GUI, llama.cpp if you want the CLI that ollama ripped off. IMO the only reason ollama is even in the conversation is it was easy to get running on macOS, allowing the SV MBP set to feel included

I Run LLMs Locally 2 years ago

Nvidia for compatibility, and as much VRAM as you can afford. Shouldn't be hard to find a 3090 / Ti in your price range. I have had decent success with a base 3080 but the 10GB really limits the models you can run

Its more the fact that we're talking about Apple catching up at all. Android SOCs have been generationally behind Apple for a long time (and MediaTek in particular as a "budget" option), but now in the GPU space that is reversed.

The situation on the desktop/laptop is muddied by CUDA and other Nvidia-exclusive tech - while the M1/M2s indeed trade blows with laptop parts like the 3060 in some specific tasks, once CUDA comes into play Nvidia walks it (unfortunately IMO, even AMD can't compete there and its holding the industry back)

In 22H2 it's fully keyboard drivable

  - Win+Z brings up the layout menu
  - number keys select the layout, then where in the chosen layout the current window should go
  - arrow keys then let you select the other windows to complete the tiling
So if I want Firefox (current window) and Slack side by side
  - Win-Z inside FF
  - 1 selects side-by-side
  - 1 again snaps FF to the left (2 would snap to right, and so on for more complex layouts)
  - Slack is the first suggested window (MRU), so Space to snap right
It's not as quick as the mouse interface yet - especially with the mouse improvements MS made - but seems like it could be easily automated with eg Autohotkey

If you're looking for a general-purpose tablet computer I think the Surface lineup is nearly unparalleled, with some important caveats.

You get a very well built machine with the best aspect ratio (3:2), Win10 tablet mode is decent _and_ you can drop back to full Windows whenever you want. This is a double edged sword - if you get a good tablet interface for a program it's wonderful, but sometimes you're reduced to pecking at the screen for mouse targets in legacy Win32 apps (the pen or cover with trackpad is helpful here).

For me, the ability to run any software I want is worth the rough edges and inconsistency compared to an iPad. I have WSL for local dev with full Linux utilities, real Photoshop, alternate browsers, Steam games, etc. I can install whatever nifty little Windows utilities or tweaks I want, customize the machine exactly as I like it, and I feel like I have lot more ownership over the machine as a result. That flexibility definitely comes with a cost compared to the out-of-the-box experience with an iPad.

As for the Go itself, its a really cute little computer but somewhat underpowered compared to a Surface Pro or Surface Book. I know a couple of people using them as their main computers and the feedback is pretty positive, FWIW.

Just a caveat that userbenchmark (while pretty useful) is banned on several hardware subreddits for _very_ questionable scoring methods, which seem to indicate bias towards certain manufacturers (most notably, drastic changes to CPU scoring just after the new Ryzen chips were released which seemed deliberately designed to keep Intel's enthusiast parts ahead). I believe their GPU benchmarks are more trustworthy, but I would skip them entirely still.

3Dmark is still fairly standard, and most reviews will include a suite of gaming / rendering tasks as well that can give much more useful real-world benchmarks. LinusTechTips is usually very good - e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoDPTJ-3qCM

Apple's iCloud upsell is far worse than Microsoft's to boot. To disable:

MS / Windows 10: Uninstall the preloaded OneDrive app in the standard way

Apple / macOS Catalina: Reboot to recovery, mount the system drive (avoiding SIP etc), use Terminal to move a plist from the System LaunchAgents - named "followupd", in case you thought it wouldn't be hidden / obfuscated. Unmount and reboot, praying you didn't break your OS. Then delete a few preference files for System Preferences.app. Oh, and likely have to repeat the process after updates

Which one would you be comfortable helping a less technical person do? And given the trajectory of macOS, I wouldn't be surprised if they close that "loophole" soon...

The advice we got from our professors when writing theses was: crack open a bottle of fine whisk{e}y [0], get a couple glasses in, write (while keeping your drink topped of course) until writing is a serious challenge, edit the next morning in the harsh and sober light of day [1].

Works a treat, even if you liver may not fully appreciate it.

[0] Whiskey may be substituted for your preferred liquor, but it is a solid traditional writers' choice

[1] TL;DR 'Write drunk, edit sober'

Hello Android 7 years ago

How is this at the top of HN? There's a lot to argue against Google and Android, but this is just inane. Complaining about the _splash screen_ of a phone? This is clickbait for /r/apple at best...

The stores (and iMessage) get brought up a lot, but for the world outside the US they are a secondary consideration if they even factor in at all. There are more _Samsung_ stores in Dublin than Apple, and the ones we have a 3rd party 'authorised resellers' with average service at best...

Yeah, completely agree on my Surface Book being the MBP I wanted to buy Great hardware (including touchpad and keyboard), Win 10 and WSL have come a long way, and the touchscreen and stylus option became part of my workflow much quicker than I expected. Probably the best laptop I've ever owned, including the 2010-2015 era 15" MBPs.

Regarding native terminals, I've had the best success with ConEmu set up to drop into WSL zsh by default. Easy to launch into cmd or powershell for Windows native stuff to boot.

Thinkpad X62 9 years ago

Yeah the aspect ratio ended up being one of my favorite things about the Surface Book (surprisingly enough, to me)

Check out the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators [0], so much fun to play with. I enjoy messing around with chiptunes on my PO-20 Arcade far more than I ever did in software.

The PO-12 [1] and PO-32 [2] (if you can find one) are the two drum machines in that line up.

[0] https://teenage.engineering/products/po

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzEvGGINE20 (this guy has videos for most of the PO series)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMk8x9fsUQE

Read Blindsight by Peter Watts. Apart from being an incredible novel it gets into this question, and it's freely available from the author's site: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

Trying to avoid spoilers here, so ROT13 - Gur nyvraf rapbhagrerq va gur abiry ner abg pbafpvbhf, naq uhzna pbafpvbhfarff vf cerfragrq nf na ribyhgvbanel fvqr rssrpg / zvfgnxr juvpu erdhverf hf gb jnfgr uhtr nzbhagf bs cbjre guvaxvat nobhg guvaxvat, vafgrnq bs whfg guvaxvat. Bhe phygher, oebnqpnfg vagb fcnpr, nccrnef yvxr n QQBF nggnpx bs vafnar vachgf gb gur aba-pbafpvbhf nyvraf orpnhfr bs ubj zhpu rssbeg vg gnxrf gb cnefr guebhtu vg nyy.

(The neurological phenomena of blindsight is also very very interesting, and suggests that our brains may do more work than is strictly required)

I have the i5 256GB/8GB model with discrete Nvidia GPU in the base (very handy for photography / light gaming). Haven't had issues with RAM although I rarely need to run VMs, and I have a SD adapter in the base to expand the storage for TV and films and so on.

The top model has an i7 and 512GB/16GB (same dGPU). It was about EUR1000 more if I recall correctly, not worth it to me.

Not sure about hardware refresh. I've seen rumours around that they might hold off for Intel's Kaby Lake parts which would mean 2017, but who knows.

Take a look at the Surface Book.

It's the most impressive laptop I've ever used. Great 3:2 screen, excellent build quality, a real touchscreen (i.e., multitouch, pen support with pressure, etc), MacBook-tier trackpad. Convertible tablet mode is far more useful than I anticipated and is nice for showing off. The new Linux subsystem is still a bit buggy but is very impressive (I was able to compile and run emacs with a GUI as if I was running Ubuntu natively, for example).