sjwright

The original iPad was a first generation product; its status as a minimum viable product was only clear after subsequent product cycles.

I suspect that new iMac design has been in the can for years, waiting for the technology to catch up. And it’s a consumer device anyway; the real test will be whether the “M1X” serious iMac is inflicted with arbitrary thinness or if it will be designed with serious users in mind.

The original iPad was, in terms of compute specifications, a minimum viable product. The M1 Macs are not—they are the combination of a mature platform with a mature silicon chip. Given the sheer volume of M1 sales there’s no chance they’re going to be so prematurely deprecated as the original iPad was.

At the very least I’d put money on the M1 not being deprecated before all Intel-powered Macs (present and future) are deprecated.

Wherever possible, they've done exactly that—so how is that a criticism? Case in point is the end-to-end encryption of iMessage. Or the at-rest encryption of iOS devices.

In other instances where Apple does have access to your data, there is a plausible justification for that access and no evidence shown where Apple has ever abused that access for commercial gain.

Even more cynically, you can say it's private from their competitors.

I've heard this from a few people recently, but I don't understand the implied criticism. What should Apple do here? Keep my data mostly private but also slip a copy of it to Google and Microsoft?

Obviously not. Through the high purchase price of their products, I'm paying (and trusting) Apple to manage my privacy and keep it private from everyone else. The fact that "everyone" necessarily includes all of Apple's competitors isn't just irrelevant, it's a red herring.

Replaceable batteries were superseded by batteries of sufficient capacity for 99% of users. (And for the remaining 1% I'm sure the non-Apple marketplace has fantastic, no-compromise solutions.) Remember when it was impressive for a laptop to have three real hours of productive battery life? Back then, most laptop batteries were trivially hot-swappable. Now it's normal to get eight or more hours of productive use from a laptop battery.

I realise that capacity is theoretically orthogonal to swappability, but functionally it's relevant because battery casings, compartments, connectors and chassis strengthening elements all take up space that could otherwise go to a larger battery pack.

This is true. Our hearing is well tuned for utility in a pre-modern context. They just don't have anything remotely like the precision of our eyesight, which can judge things like the straightness of a line, or simultaneously compare the properties of distinct objects.

I am not confusing the two. In a band-limited signal, the Shannon-Nyquist theorem mathematically proves that the sampling rate is the frequency resolution. It also proves that when a signal is band limited, discrete time sampling can be a zero-loss transformation.

Your analogy misunderstands audio signals. The resolution components of bit depth and lossy compression are different axes and should not be conflated with or analogised to frequency resolution. They behave very differently.

For me bedsheets are their own wash cycle, so there’s nothing to stack them with. I just carry them upstairs and dump them into the blanket box when they're done. No need for a basket.

But let's say your washing process is different to mine. I'd still rather do two trips upstairs than fold sheets.

128k MP3s

Twenty years ago, such files would have been barely listenable. Ten years ago, this would have been tolerable but obviously compromised. Today, with the best encoders, 128k MP3s are shockingly good. Certainly not perfect. But good.

MP3 encoding has come a long way.

The crucial difference is that compared to our other senses, our ears are really, really, astonishingly shit. They can be highly precise in one context and ludicrously imprecise in another context. And they lie. They often tell us we're hearing what our eyes expect to hear.

And more stress on the speaker/tweeter drivers.

Of course, when you look at these high resolution recordings, the amplitude of material above 20kHz is piddling. The amount of harmonics/overtones in acoustic instruments is minuscule in the first place.

I believe you are sincere. But I think that if you were able to run a sufficiently rigorous blind test (note: precise level matching is critical) you'd surprise yourself.

It definitely sounded different, I heard things in songs that I've listened to for years that I've not heard before.

That usually means one of two things—

1. the frequency response of this new system is different, changing the relative loudness of different instruments;

2. the context caused you to concentrate on the music differently and your experience of it was therefore different.

The critical thing nobody ever says is "I heard things I never heard before, then I went back to my regular system and I stopped hearing the new thing." That never[0] happens—because the thing you hadn't noticed was there all along.

[0] Edit: Okay yes, so not never. I was assuming that the regular system is a reasonably competent modern setup. The median intentional audio system, shall we say.

Again yes, that’s exactly my point. They are double dipping on the good will; first as an employee perk, second on their corporate annual reports.

I never understood the need to fold bed sheets. Crinkled sheets simply aren’t a problem I’ve ever had; you barely notice the difference once they’re stretched over the bed and pillows. I have a blanket box at the end of the bed; I just shove the second set of sheets in straight out of the dryer.

(I do fold sheets for the guest bed but that’s because the alternative set might spend months on the shelf. Most of the time the same set is washed and put straight back on the bed.)

That’s my point. The donation is financially a corporate donation, but is being marketed to the employee as a perk of their employment. That it’s “their” donation.

And then the accountants probably tabulated them as corporate donations. So were they gifts from the employee or not?

Not every website requires retention of every person in order to survive. In my case, my website is better because my user base is tolerant of a bit of jank. I consider it a win whenever someone leaves because of trivial crap.

Exactly this. I have no desire to develop against the most bleeding edge target. Thanks for explaining this better than I could.

It's no matter; I'm not here for the points. Personally I find it hilarious to be down-voted for stating plain facts about my own (demonstrably effective) development process.

You do realise that my “about” is a joke, right?

Regardless, I’m self-employed and my website makes enough money that I can spend plenty of time arguing with people on the Internet. Your admonishments certainly aren’t going to be my undoing.

HTTPS is necessary. QUIC is not.

It’s going to be a long time before any site requires QUIC in order to work.

I just don’t like the idea of having my own devices conspire against me to compromise my own privacy.

As a web developer I don’t test in Chrome—I develop against Firefox and sanity check using Safari iOS.

Therefore my site is explicitly optimised for Firefox. Chrome users might experience issues. Or they won’t. I have no idea.

Unless your primary workload is media encoding or rendering in Blender, those benchmarks are just as artificial as the truly artificial ones.

Most people’s performance workload is dominated by media consumption—not media creation. But the latter sure does make for good benchmarks.

No worries, I'm pretty sure I was unclear before. Though I must admit I'm not entirely sure how or why "libertarian wet dream" UBI is so objectionable.

Is it because libertarian UBI might not be so generous? That it's motivated by saving taxpayer money rather than resolving poverty? On that I would agree. That's not the point of UBI.

Is it because libertarian UBI would be an excuse to eliminate more poverty welfare programs than liberal UBI? Because I personally see eliminating welfare programs to be a good thing so long as the UBI isn't intentionally less generous than what it replaces.

Or is it because libertarian UBI would mean Governments no longer forcing welfare dollars to be spent in a "responsible" way? Most of the criticisms I've heard seem to work on the principle that poor people don't know how to look after themselves or spend money wisely. So we need Government to force them to spend X amount on food with programs like SNAP, or spend X amount on shelter with housing subsidies. On this point I'd side VERY strongly with the libertarians. We have far too much paternalism in Government.

To say one's ability to think rationally is severely hindered, suggests impairment in (for example) considering short term versus long term priorities, or being overly impulsive, or being overly controlled by emotions.

Whereas "crazy" suggests an absence of sanity.

Rational vs irrational. Sanity vs insanity. These are not interchangeable ideas.

I think I may have been unclear. When I said “it eliminates the significant time wasted in maintaining welfare entitlement” I’m talking about the time wasted by poor people as they continuously jump through hoops in order to prove they qualify for programs. I consider it insulting that we actively sabotage poor people by lowering their productivity potential.

If I wasn’t unclear and wasn’t misunderstood, you’ll have to explain to me how this has anything to do with libertarianism.

Calling UBI a "libertarian wet dream" is unnecessarily reductive. Personally I try to shy away from using any partisan labels to describe any policies because they are rarely (if ever) necessary. And their meaning rarely translates between people of disparate political views.

I don't support any UBI policy that leaves anyone economically worse off compared to existing welfare. In fact I would expect people to be reliably better off after you factor in secondary benefits such as a reduced time burden upon individuals (time can be a scarce resource when you're poor) and increased ability to prioritise your own needs. The last thing poor people need is fewer resources.

I also don't support any UBI policy that attempts to supplant programs which address disability as opposed to straight poverty.

In my mind the essential benefits of UBI are:

• Less fraud. It's much harder to game a system when everyone automatically qualifies for it.

• Less stigma. It's much harder to be ashamed by reliance on a system when everyone automatically qualifies for it.

• Less disincentive to earn more. Most welfare programs cut out out after you exceed a particular income threshold, so many people have an incentive to keep their income low. (Or to lie about income.)

• Less complexity. It shifts the burden of economic rebalancing away from welfare programs (written by politicians and administered by gate-keeping bureaucrats) and towards a system that already exists: progressive income tax. While everyone qualifies for UBI, high earners are progressively, functionally disqualified by having the UBI clawed back in higher marginal income tax rates.

• Increased mobility and increased incentive to migrate to areas with lower cost of living.